Category Archives: China

Showdown at Qantas Office – Beijing

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So part of the attraction of our Round the World ticket is it’s flexibility. Once you’ve identified you’re destinations and flight dates you can change your dates at will. So if you get some where and love it you can stay longer, or if you get somewhere and hate it you can jet out, and for a fee you can change your destinations entirely. This flexibility is one of the reasons we went with the OneWorld Alliance ticket.

Of course, when you’re planning things you plan them in a perfect world. Reality sometimes sets in when you try to actually use this flexibility. First off, it’s free to change your dates using the OneWorld Explorer ticket. This is true, unless you bought your ticket from Qantas. Qantas charges a 25 dollar fee each time you change your dates. This applies to us even though we bought our tickets through American Airlines. What to know why? We bought our tickets at the American Airlines desk in Auckland. And the American Airlines desk in Auckland is just that, a desk in a Qantas office, therefore everything gets printed on Qantas stock and we get to pay extra for services that should be free. Kind of annoying, but what are you going to do?

We’ve made date changes to our tickets twice already, and each time they went swimmingly. So when we decided we wanted to make both date and destination changes in Beijing we weren’t expecting any problems. There were problems.

First off, we wanted to make destination changes in part because two new airlines have joined the alliance: Royal Jordanian and MALÉV, the national carrier of Hungary. Adding these two add a lot of options for flights to the Mid-East and Central/Eastern Europe. We were pretty excited about the possibilities, so we headed down to the Qantas office in Beijing.

Note to any Qantas ticket holders thinking about going into the Beijing office – they have no idea what they’re doing. Stay away! Stay away! Stay away!

After two minutes in the office I knew the wisest thing was to get our tickets out of the hands of the Qantas rep who had them and get as far away as possible. When she told us she didn’t know that Namibia was in Africa we were concerned. When she thought Victoria Falls was in Europe we were very concerned. When she told us that a British Airways flight wasn’t part of the alliance, I just wanted to run away. We agreed on a “Face-Saving” maneuver – she would read up on the OneWorld alliance rules, and we would give her a list of changes we would like to make. We left relieved that nothing at all had been done.

Fast forward a couple of days. After “educating” herself she started to make the changes we had requested. We where notified by email. But instead of making all the changes she made just two. I immediately called the office and she told me that the changes she made would cost $150 each and for the rest of them I should “Probably go to Hong Kong office. Much bigger, more use to this.”

This really wasn’t the response we were looking for. So we headed back down to the Qantas office as soon as we could, and luckily got hold of someone who mostly knew what she was doing – even though she had to be “convinced” that Royal Jordanian was now a OneWorld partner and that “Yes, you can” book us on that airline. We got mostly all the changes we were looking for, and it only took the better part of three days. Three trips to the Qantas Beijing office and a couple of “double check” calls to the American Airlines Round the World ticket desk in the states (All of whom are extremely competent).

So the winners in our ticket change are Victoria Falls and Istanbul. The losers: Mauritius and Nairobi. Why: All the cheap accommodation in Mauritius (there is very little to begin with) was booked up and we didn’t feel like sleeping in the airport for a week. Nairobi lost out because we decided we didn’t want to trek overland in Africa for a month. So instead we’re flying into and out of Vic Falls and spending the better part of a week in Istanbul.

Some people have said to us that Qantas is really an acronym for Queer and Nasty Try Another Service. We do not believe this. The reps we’ve used in other Qantas offices have been terrific, and we’d love it if they worked in Beijing, but they don’t and the folks in that office aren’t really up to speed with OneWorld tickets. Too bad they’re having the Olympics here next year. If you absolutely have to use this office, my advice would be to have all of your details figured out before you go in (flight numbers, carrier codes, the works). You may have to dig in your heals on some points, but you’ll (probably) get the changes you need.

China Notes for Budget Travelers

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Our original budget for China was based on the costs of the big cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. Our goal was to stay at or below $70 a day for both of us. We were able to get by on about that in Hong Kong, but were able to easily stay below $50 a day for most of China.

This was a welcome change and was in large part thanks to the vast network of YHA hostels that have come online in the last couple of years. Our lodging rarely exceeded $20 for a double room with the exception of Hong Kong where you pay $30-35 for a tidy little matchbox. The lowest we paid was about $2.50 for a basic twin room in Tiger Leaping Gorge and the average was likely somewhere between $10-$15.

When we did have to opt for a Chinese hotel, the rule of thumb was bargain. Never pay the quoted rate for anything in China, especially hotel rooms. They were a little more money and a little more worn that the hostels, but still served the purpose. Trying to communicate with them at what time and for how long the hot water works was a whole different issue.

Food was always an interesting endeavor. If you go for western restaurants, where they are available, you more or less pay western prices. Food in general is not very expensive, but finding a place with an English menu or an English speaker was the challenge. The best way to go was the little stalls in the side alleys where the food is fresh and you can point to what you’d like. We took our chances with our botched Chinese and Mandarin phrasebook on more than one occasion. Typically we ended up with some rice and sauteed bok choy – for which I admit I began to develop a slight fondness.

Aside from a few fast and fancy train rides, we didn’t really have any budget breakers in China. Some of the sites have ridiculously high entrance fees, but that was usually offset by cheap lodging and food. Overall, China offered a lot of bang for the buck.

Life on the Trans-Mongolian Express

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A Thriving Mongolian Community

A Thriving Mongolian Community

When young Mongolians ask their parents where white people come from I’m sure many are tempted to say “From the Trans-Mongolian Express”. After being a pair of white dots in a sea of Chinese faces for over a month it was a little shocking being in the majority on this train from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar. We boarded early on Monday morning at a crowded train station in Beijing – nothing new there – but it was unusually easy to find our platform, as soon as the station attendant saw our faces she said “Ulaanbaatar?” and pointed us to Track 2. There we boarded the train with a ridiculous number of other backpackers, some headed to Mongolia, others headed on to Moscow or other parts of Russia.

The train is called the Trans-Mongolian Express, but I would suggest “Express” is used very liberally here. These trains are slow, old and Soviet. In fact they were the first trains in China we’ve been on that didn’t have AC – that’s because they’re not Chinese trains, their Mongolian – it’s not because you don’t need air conditioning on this 30 hour train ride that crosses the Gobi desert, it’s because they are old Soviet trains. I take it back, there is AC on the train, there are two classes – Soft Sleeper, and Deluxe. In Soft Sleeper you’re in a compartment with four berths and nice soft wide beds, but no AC. In Deluxe you’re in a compartment with two beds, your own personal shower and AC.

It landscape changes quickly on the train from massive smoggy Cityscape to rolling countryside, then you pass through the Great Wall into the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. By night-time you’re at the Mongolian border and your thinking “Hey, not too bad!”, then you sit at the border for about five hours as the train changes it’s gauge and your passport gets processed on both sides of the border. All of a sudden it’s close to 2AM, where did the time go?

Surprise! It’s dusty & hot in the Gobi, and unfortunately for us, we were in a car without AC, so your choices are sit and sweat it out in the compartment with the windows up, or put them down and eat dust all night. We chose to sweat it out. When you wake up the green is all gone, the landscape is flat as a pancake and you are definitely in the middle of the desert. By lunchtime the green has returned the land starts to undulate again and there are even a few trees around – you are nearing your destination: Ulaanbaatar.

You can tell you’re nearing civilization again as the amount of litter outside the train increases. On our approach to UB as it’s known in there parts Ulaanbaator was confused for a large parking lot – I am not making this up. Actually, it was an easy mistake to make, the outer “suburbs” of town are mainly Ger (Mongolian tents) cities, so it’s easy enough to confuse the two, but the UB is a whole other entry.

Despite all the heat, dust, boredom at the border, and the dining car running out of food, I have to say that we did very well on carriage-mates. We met an English couple named Sam & Dave on the platform in Beijing and as luck would have it they were our Carriage mates on the train, and great company. They’re taking the train all the way down the line to St. Petersburg, good on ‘em I say. Their good humor made the trip much more bearable.