My next oct visa run thinking China.

Been to most other asian countries apart Bitma, Cambodia.

 

Im going with gf.

 

Now Shanghai or Benjing or would u suggest other city?

 

Like from main destination it would be cool to reach other places like Great Wall or something.

 

Suggestions welcome from China experts.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

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1 trip?  

 

Go to Beijing, see the Great Wall (an hour's drive), the Forbidden City (right in town), Tiananmen Square (right across the street) and maybe the Summer Palace (snoozefest unless you really like dysfunctional history).

 

Museums, parks, Pearl Market (Hong Qiao Market) and Silk Road and YaBaLu Russian market for all the fakes you can carry... 

 

I can't think of another city that will give you such a concentrated "Chinese Adventure".  You can spend weeks and not see it all.

 

Shanghai's light years ahead, but it's not really China any more.

 

Noted

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As you're not asking about visas, just travel suggestions, I'll move this thread to a more appropriate forum.

Make sure visit after 10th October to avoid the National Holiday. The Great Wall during that week will resemble a refugee crisis.

 

Beijing is best for a short trip for the reasons mentioned above, but Xian, Chengdu and Guilin make good short breaks too. Each with a few iconic tourist sites. 

Impulse (above) has it right. I lived in China for 2 years and visited quite a few places. All areas have places of interest but for a one-off that includes the Wall, then Beijing is the place for you. As an aside, depending on your nationality, Shanghai and Beijing I believe you can go to visa-free. Other places you would need to get a tourist visa. (things may have changed though) 

Everyone should see Shanghai and Beijing.  Go there if you have never been.  Also Kunming is lovely, inexpensive and it is only a two hour flight from Bangkok.  The October first holiday can last a full week, so try to avoid it. 

I prefer to avoid the stainless steel and glass of the more modern cities.

The south is more interesting to me, with older buildings, lifestyle, less frantic pace of life.

Do remember that Winter is around the corner, and arriving in Guangzhou after a 2 hour flight from Chiang Mai, and it's 4C, can be a bit of a shock.

But that said, I found Guangzhou most interesting, with excellent parks, transport system, fairly clean air (Diesel is a no-no), nice walks along the river, and some excellent museums.

Cities full of Russian tourists can be horrendously expensive - i.e. Hainan island.

I would second places like Guilin and Xian (terracotta warriors museum). Guilin had a limit on the height of buildings when I was there. Go cormorant fishing at night and view the limestone outcrops from a cruise on the Pearl river in the day.

I would add Nanjing to my list. It is the birthplace of Dr Sun Yat Sen, the father of modern China. His mausoleum is excellent.

Nanjing was the scene of some of Japan's worst atrocities during their occupation of Nanjing in the late 1930s. Try to read a copy of The Rape of Nanjing.

Note, you'll probably need a visa to enter china, unless you qualify for a 2-4 day transit visa (which is a stamp upon arrival as opposed to an actual visa).  Google it and you'll see the cities that qualify for it, but it can't be round trip, for example, BKK - Shanghai -BKK but needs to be BKK - Shanghai - some other country - then back to Thailand.

If you want to go somewhere uniquely pretty, head to Shangrila and Lijiang. 

 

Fly direct to Kunming from DMK, BKK or I believe there are direct flights from CNX now, then get a connecting flight to Lijiang. 

 

Lijiang itself is seriously pretty with the old town center being essentially a restored old Chinese city with cars completely banned and cobble stone streets. While it's clearly set up for tourists (it's soo clean it's not funny) it really is like nothing I've ever seen before and few westerners would have (never saw another farang the entire time I was there vs Chinese tourists and weirdly we met a hiso girl from Bangkok).

From Lijiang you can go up to Dragon Snow Mountain and come back through Tiger Leaping Gorge, some of the prettiest places you'll see.

 

If you want to go further, hire a car and driver in Lijiang and head to Shangrila - ok, it's not the original Tibet one vs the Chinese version but at that point you're climbing well into the Himalayas. Amazing country side, seriously high mountains but I would warn - insanely cold - I was there late March and Shangrila town itself got down to -16C, my Thai GF at the time never stopped complaining.

Cost wises it's not excessive - for memory I spent under 50,000 baht for the entire trip, 2 people. Everything in China is on the expensive side, but as usual flights are these days the cheapest part. 

You're not missing much I had to spend a few weeks in Beijing when I was working in Tokyo before I retired.  The city of Beijing stinks and it's heavily polluted like really bad.  Maybe go see the Great Wall or Shianghai I wish I would have had the chance to visit places like that but the whole time I was there it was all work work work.  Because of the type of work I did I can't go back to China like ever again thanks to a little thing called biometrics at immigration.  I would have liked to have seen Shianghai or the Great Wall but honestly I couldn't care less I have absolutely no desire to go back to China ever again anyway.  If you want to see a nice place go visit Tokyo or Seoul.  I worked in Tokyo, Japan from 2009 to 2012 and I had to travel to Seoul, Korea on business like once a month usually for a week at a time.  

 

Seoul is nice but I'd recommend Tokyo over Seoul anytime although Korea is A LOT cheaper than Japan.  You could go see Mt. Fuji which is only a couple of hours outside of downtown Tokyo.  You can only hike Mt. Fuji during the summer months June, July, and August only.  There's also a Wildlife Refuge near Mt. Fuji that you can drive through or take a tour bus.  I used to drive everywhere because I actually lived there and had an IDP.  The most memorable experience I had in Japan was March 11th 2011 the day we experienced the 3rd most powerful earthquake in recorded history.  Then of course the tsunami up in Sendai and the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant meltdown.  My wife and I lived through all that.  We were very lucky because there was hardly any structural damage all the damage was caused by the tsunami up in Sendai.  It was a 9.0 magnitude earthquake that lasted over 5 minutes we experienced a lot of earthquakes in Japan but never anything like that.  I was expecting to come home from work and find our house destroyed but everything was fine even the TV was still on the stand.  Although we did experience rolling blackouts and aftershocks everyday and night for 2 months after the quake.  We'd normally get 2 aftershocks a day.  Japan is a great place but just stay away from Fukushima.  Normally the earthquakes there average 6.0 to 7.0 magnitude but they usually don't last more than 10 to 20 seconds and they almost never cause any damage because Japan is so well structurally engineered.  You can feel perfectly safe during an earthquake in Tokyo because they are very well prepared structurally.  

 

I'd say go to Tokyo or Seoul rather than China, China sucks at least that was my experience anyway.  I've also heard good things about the Thai Embassy in Seoul, Korea. 

Edited September 20, 20178 yr by Jim7777

Did a 4 day boat trip up yang zi river. GREAT! Lot of shows in big cities. Check out Wendy wu tours for ideas. Thats who I took. Fabulous.

The inferstrute in major Chinese City is world class, but many of the citizens are still third world. 

If you're planning to visit on a transit visa, check the requirements carefully.  "Transit" doesn't include flying in from BKK, then back out to BKK (or any other airport).  I can't tell you how carefully that's enforced because that's always a mystery in China.  But count on enforcement being stepped up around this time because of high level government meetings coming up.  They don't want to accidentally let in any would-be protesters.

 

 

On 9/20/2017 at 4:48 PM, lordblackader said:

If you want to go somewhere uniquely pretty, head to Shangrila and Lijiang. 

 

Fly direct to Kunming from DMK, BKK or I believe there are direct flights from CNX now, then get a connecting flight to Lijiang. 

 

Lijiang itself is seriously pretty with the old town center being essentially a restored old Chinese city with cars completely banned and cobble stone streets. While it's clearly set up for tourists (it's soo clean it's not funny) it really is like nothing I've ever seen before and few westerners would have (never saw another farang the entire time I was there vs Chinese tourists and weirdly we met a hiso girl from Bangkok).

From Lijiang you can go up to Dragon Snow Mountain and come back through Tiger Leaping Gorge, some of the prettiest places you'll see.

 

If you want to go further, hire a car and driver in Lijiang and head to Shangrila - ok, it's not the original Tibet one vs the Chinese version but at that point you're climbing well into the Himalayas. Amazing country side, seriously high mountains but I would warn - insanely cold - I was there late March and Shangrila town itself got down to -16C, my Thai GF at the time never stopped complaining.

Cost wises it's not excessive - for memory I spent under 50,000 baht for the entire trip, 2 people. Everything in China is on the expensive side, but as usual flights are these days the cheapest part. 

spot on, love that area of China.

Yangshuo --accessible from Kumming...the stone forest is  amazing

ALSO IF u have the time  Tibet

Shanghai, Hands down. Then if you go in the winter go up north to Harbin, aka Ice city.