Traveling from Guangzhou to Beijing

[Dave311]

First of all I apologise if this is the incorrect section to post a question like this it's my first post.

A friend and I are visiting China in February for 2 weeks and were planning to do something a little different.

We are planning to book a flight into HK, then a flight out of Beijing 2 weeks later. We are not going to make any plans for the bits in between until we get there. Just take our time, seeing as much of the country as we can along the way, ultimately to see if we want to go back and teach English there next year.

How hard would a journey like this be to make for 2 males that have never been to the country before? I'm assuming we would be relying on trains and buses most of the way. Neither of us speak any Chinese but we have done a fair bit of traveling through Thailand and Malaysia before and fairly adept and being able to overcome language barriers with signals, gestures and drawings.

[xiaoxiaocao]

Bring a good guide/phrasebook and you'll be fine. Write down destinations/train numbers on paper when buying train tickets.

[roddy]

When's Chinese New Year this year? Are you going to hit the crowds? Either way, I'd have a read of a guide book and at least pick out a few destinations - China's got some great stuff to see, but it also has a lot of boring cities you're going to want to stay away from.

[imron]

When's Chinese New Year this year?

This year (2011) it was on Feb 3 Next year (2012) it's Jan 23 So looks like they'll just miss the crowds.

[WestTexas]

I think this can be a fun way to travel, not making exact plans. I would advise you to read up a lot about different places before you come here though. If you don't have any ideas at all on where to go, you might arrive and then have to spend an extra day doing research, booking tickets etc, and if you are only here for two weeks that's a day you don't want to waste.

[wedge]

If you plan on spending time up north (and you will if you have to fly out of Beijing), just be aware of how cold it's going to be.

[wushijiao]

Sounds fun. I think you can do it, but I'd probably try to schedule in a few cushion days, just in case.

I think you might want to consider researching a bit more, as WestTexas says.

You could consider, for example, going from HK to Chengdu, Kunming, Chongqing, or Shanghai (or some other city) over 10-12 days, and then flying to Beijing (and giving yourself a few days to see Beijing). In other words, doing a truncated version might be nice, since HK to Beijing is still a lot of ground to cover in two weeks (1967 km).

Personally, I think the best places to travel in China are generally in the South West, but then again, everybody is different! It largely depends on what you want to see.