| DOCUMENTS EU citiziens need a
VISA before arriving at the border or at the airport. In Italy a single entry visa for
Italians costed 40 euros.
HEALTH
I didn't do any particular vaccination, although, at that
time, H45N1 virus (chicken flu) was around in China. Anyway I came back home healthy :-)
MONEY
I changed Euros and Dollars, both of them are accepted but changing money
is not that easy. It can be done only at "Bank of China". If you have
"Kazakh Tenge" no bank will accept them apart of the black change (inside the
bank of China in Urumqi) (read the story)
EQUIPMENT IN GENERAL
ü Bring your
own sleeping to be warm in the cold rooms
ü A chinese
phrasebook turned out indispensable, while don't even try to use a dictionary to translate
Chinese characters to english or whatever language: spot your character in the dictionary
is a real challenge
ü Don't
believe the reception if they say you there's the hot water: most of the time it's not
true or just very few hours per days
TRAINS INFO
Change 1 euro= 10 yuan (01/2006)
The cost of an overnight travel (12h) by train in
hard sleepers cost 140- 250 yuan depending on the train: slow or fast ones. You can get it
from the train number (i.e: "K" in the number indicates the best trains, while
"N" the medium and "T" the shittiest)
Classes (even if in China ufficially there're no classes):
Soft sleepers (a kind of sleeper first class)
Hard sleepers (a kind of sleeper second class)
Soft seats (a kind of first class)
Hard seats (a kind of second classe)
TRAIN TIPS
ü Personally
I found the hard sleepers class comfortable enough for the long travels, I don't think
it's worth to spent the money for the soft sleepers one. Consider it costs the double,
hence comparable with a flight
ü Avoid
night travels in the hard seats vagon, it's a kind of vagon for cattle
ü Soft seat
are not in all the trains, do count on them too much!!!
ü Don't
count always on the immediate availability of the hard sleeper tickets, buy the ticket in
advance (one or two days)
ü Train is always more comfortable than bus.
ü If you cannot
find a hard sleeper ticket buy a seat and once on the train ask to upgrade it (do it as
soon as you get on!!)
ü In the big stations
there're electronic displays that show the availability of the hard/soft sleepers; it
happened that , even if in the display it appeared the train was fullbooked, there were
still free places. So don't give up before having insisted!!
ü I don't know why, at the
station counter they want to sell you only the tickets of the train originating in that
station not even mentioning you the others. Before getting to the counter try to
figure out which trains get to your destination and write down their number
ü Never trash your
ticket, because you will always be asked for to exit the station
ü Try to get the bed in the
middle or the top one, because during the day the lower ones are used as seats by
everybody
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