Travel options: interested in any advice or opinions

[Larry Language Lover]

Hey guys, I want your opinion.   In my language school you can also purchase additional weeks just for travel, the whole trip organized by them and accompanied by one of the teachers as guide.  There are many options.   Two of them are:  1) Lijiang - Dali- Shangri-la  or 2) Guilin and Yangshuo.  Which do you think is the better option?  (This would be for the first week of September.)

[jannesan]

Can’t speak for the options, but I would recommend organizing everything on your own and going by yourself. That is going to be more immersive and forces you into communicating without depending on a guide. While at the school you can already learn about how to book hotels and transportation.

 

At least this is my advice if you want to optimize for improving your Chinese as much as possible.

[Guest realmayo]

I'd pick the Lijiang option, mainly because the second one seems to me easier to arrange on your own if in the future you decided to do so.

[Moshen]

I totally agree with Jannesan - go by yourself.

 

At the end of my year working in China, I traveled by myself, and it was so much fun to have conversations in the train with strangers from all over China.  You wouldn't have that experience with a guided tour.

 

 

[Larry Language Lover]

What I am a bit worrried about is that August and September are the rainy season in Lijiang and Yunnan and I might get stuck with a tour where it rains every single day!!

[abcdefg]

No right or wrong answer, in my opinion. I think a lot depends on how adventurous and self-reliant you are as a person; depends on how risk-tolerant you are when you travel; how comfortable you are with the unknown. It almost surely would be more efficient to have a guide; as well as being less stressful. Less chance of things getting fouled up; of the plans suddenly going sideways. I'm assuming you are in China solo. If you are there with family and are responsible for them having a good time, it's a different ball game. 

[Jan Finster]

On 7/5/2024 at 3:07 AM, jannesan said:

Can’t speak for the options, but I would recommend organizing everything on your own and going by yourself. That is going to be more immersive and forces you into communicating without depending on a guide. While at the school you can already learn about how to book hotels and transportation.

 

If this is with Keats, I am not sure the school would sponsor the language study visa if OP went on th trip alone (?) 

[abcdefg]

On 7/7/2024 at 1:15 AM, Jan Finster said:

If this is with Keats, I am not sure the school would sponsor the language study visa if OP went on the trip alone (?) 

 

Good point! Perhaps his visa is a tourist visa, however, in which case he would have more flexibility. 

[Lu]

I agree with Realmayo, I'd pick the Lijiang option because the other one is slightly easier to arrange for yourself. Although Lijiang etc is also doable on one's own.

 

Organising your own travels vs going with an organised tour: both are fun and worthwhile, if you ask me. An organised tour is a much more time-efficient way of seeing a place; if you organise your own travels, the travelling itself is the adventure and visiting the place is more of a means to an end. If you're an experienced traveller, you probably already know which option you prefer. If you're not an experienced traveller, I'd advise first going on a guided tour and organise your own travels for the next outing.

[abcdefg]

On 7/5/2024 at 6:21 AM, Larry Language Lover said:

What I am a bit worrried about is that August and September are the rainy season in Lijiang and Yunnan and I might get stuck with a tour where it rains every single day!!

 

September, and most years the latter parts of August, in Yunnan are "shoulder season" during which you may get rain or you may get mostly dry days. I traveled (from Kunming) up into Yunnan's northwest several years in a row, often well above Lijiang, up near the border with Tibet, the reason being that hotel occupancy was low and consequently prices were more favorable than during "peak season." Sometimes it worked out well, from a weather standpoint, and sometimes it rained a lot, all day long. Once in Lijiang, I ran into torrential rains that flooded the streets and snarled all vehicle transport for several hours. Parts of the city had been rebuilt without adequate drainage following the big fire. Even the busses couldn't run. But it all worked out in a couple of days.

 

Traveling with a teacher and a few other students could be like a small-group language class if the members and the leader all agreed to rely on Chinese as their primary language. Personally, I find when I am forced by my surroundings to communicate in Chinese in order to meet my daily needs, progress is much faster.