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This thread is sort of a side-growth of the somewhat meta-thread about Tatiana and Sasha. I suspect that this thread may be of very little broad interest, but it would just have been oddly out of place where it was before.
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Mucus:
quote:BB: This is very off-topic. I may take this into a different thread. But a thought occurs, given your travels, have you visited any of Harbin, Dalian, Suzhou, or Guilin?
I'm afraid out of that list I can only say I've been to Gui Lin. Beautiful country, gorgeous in fact.
I assume you've been to all those places?
Nope. Actually I have not been to them and that is why I was curious. I'm planning a three week trip to China with my girlfriend after she graduates in June. We'll be visiting those places plus Hong Kong.
Your phrase "in my travels" just sparked the idea that I could perhaps briefly pick your brain about Guilin or Hong Kong as the date draws nearer and we flesh out our plans (assuming you have the time or inclination to anyways) since you would have a different and interesting angle on things than we do.
(I've only been to Beijing for three weeks for a study abroad course, then briefly Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Xian ... technically Hong Kong if you count a childhood trip)
quote:Originally posted by scholar: Suzhou is ok, but somewhat touristy. There are nearby cities that have the canals and similar appeal but less tourists, which I enjoyed.
What places in China did you visit? Did you visit Hangzhou? (Hangzhou vs. Suzhou is the comparison that I've heard before)
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Blayne Bradley
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I wanna go to Dalian to see the Shi Lang as its being restored to combat readiness.
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We went to Tongli, which is on the outskirts of Suzhou. We went on a cruise on the Yangtze river (before the damn). I think we visited Hangzhou, but it was one of those too fast stops on a tour. We also went to Beijing, Shanghai, and Xian. The in laws live in Shanghai, so we spent the most time there, but did the least.
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Yeah, the cruise idea on the Yangtze was up for consideration but I figured with the dam it might not be worth the time that it requires. We are planning on taking a much smaller boat ride on a river near Guilin though.
While in Beijing, we did run into and observe many a "too fast tour" and that didn't really impress me so we're trying to balance longer stays in each of the areas we're going with the ever tempting desire to add more stops into our schedule. The big debate is whether to trek to Lijiang in Guangxi or not.
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In 2001 I went on a just over a week long trip with my father and some friends to Chengdu and Guilin.
This person created a website about their trip to Chengdu, that very closely followed what I did while there. The only differences being that I didn't stay in a city, I stayed at a Buddhist monestary, definately a much cooler housing selection than a hotel. I can't recommend Chengdu highly enough, as much as I enjoyed Guilin, Chengdu took the cake for me.
But you are going to Guilin, I assume that if you are visiting that place then you care alot about scenic things? Do you have any command of Mandarin? That in large part dictates how much fun you can have in the less cosmopolitan areas of China.
As for Hong Kong, I could go on all day about it, I would just need to know what you'd like to do while you're there. Shopping? Hiking? Historical Viewing? Eating? Just give me some kind of idea how long you will be there and where in Hong Kong you will be staying and I'll do my best to come up with some suggestions for you.
Besides Beijing, I have not been to much in the North Eastern parts of China, so I can't do much for you there. Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I was supposed to go to HK this summer, but my father in law is having trouble breathing due to the air pollution so they were opposed to me bringing the baby. Which is why I turned down free airline tickets to China (and knowing my father in law, the rest of the trip would have been paid for as well). But I can't just leave my baby for 2-3 weeks.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: This person created a website about their trip to Chengdu, that very closely followed what I did while there. The only differences being that I didn't stay in a city, I stayed at a Buddhist monestary, definately a much cooler housing selection than a hotel. I can't recommend Chengdu highly enough, as much as I enjoyed Guilin, Chengdu took the cake for me.
As I said, its incredibly tempting to add new destinations. I can definitely see why some people do the extremely rapid high-travel, high number of destination tours. I'm checking it out but its a bit far from the East coast + south area that we're trying to stick to. As a far off dream, we're hoping to do a trip to various destinations along the Silk Road, we may check Chengdu out on the way there.
quote: But you are going to Guilin, I assume that if you are visiting that place then you care alot about scenic things? Do you have any command of Mandarin? That in large part dictates how much fun you can have in the less cosmopolitan areas of China.
Indeed. We're visiting Harbin and Dalian to catch up with her relatives and friends in China and Hong Kong to partially check out my background. (She immigrated from China right before high school, I was born in Canada) We figured that we wanted to go somewhere less urban as a change from the big cities and also because Guilin looks like a positively gorgeous place to relax and decompress based on the research we've done so far.
We're going for the scenery there, I would like to check out historical places but I do not get the impression that there is much there of historical interest.
My Mandarin is very basic, mostly from that three-week study abroad course (and I suck at languages). However, she's a native speaker of course. I've got passable conversational ability in Cantonese, but that won't be useful at all till we get to Hong Kong. We'll see how it goes I guess.
quote: As for Hong Kong, I could go on all day about it, I would just need to know what you'd like to do while you're there. Shopping? Hiking? Historical Viewing? Eating? Just give me some kind of idea how long you will be there and where in Hong Kong you will be staying and I'll do my best to come up with some suggestions for you.
I'm more interested in historical viewing and possibly hiking. She'll be interested in the shopping but I rather suspect she'll be way ahead of me in that department anyways so she'll need no help in that regard... As a silly thought, I would get major kicks from seeing the Stephen Chow movie in Hong Kong while we're there but I have no idea if it will still be in theatres by the time we get there. Too bad Golden Harvest is gone otherwise a studio tour would be cool (if they ever had them to start off with).
We're still debating how much time to balance here and there, but we're thinking probably around three or four days in Hong Kong.
quote: Besides Beijing, I have not been to much in the North Eastern parts of China, so I can't do much for you there.
Thats ok, I hit quite a few places in Beijing while I was there. There are actually photos from my trip linked in on my profile. I uploaded them mostly to share with my friends on the trip but you can always take a look for nostalgic value Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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I can't recommend Chengdu highly enough, as much as I enjoyed Guilin, Chengdu took the cake for me.![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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I'm checking it out but its a bit far from the East coast + south area that we're trying to stick to. As a far off dream, we're hoping to do a trip to various destinations along the Silk Road, we may check Chengdu out on the way there. 
