Hi all, my spouse and I are planning a trip to china this year for vacation, in October. I was hoping to field some advice on where to go exactly, what to see, and general advice on navigating while only understanding English. What apps should I install on my phone for payment, translation, etc.
Rough plan currently is to fly into Hong Kong/stay for 1-2 days. Train to Shenzhen for 1-2 days. Train to Beijing 1-2 days. Then fly back.
Not sure exactly what we want to see, yet. For sure, the Great Wall. Also want to take a super fast train to Beijing.
Happy to hear all your thoughts, thanks!
Seems like a lot of travel time for a short trip, maybe spend more time in two places instead of trying to fit three in.
DeepL is good translation app.
WeChat pay is going to be helpful, and/or Alipay
Having a good VPN will be useful if you need to connect with people back home, although many foreign focused hotels have a VPN type connection built in to their Wifi and I think all of Guandong province has a similar thing with internet connection there.
This was not my experience, I was in Guangdong earlier this year and I was reliant on VPNs both on data and on wifi. I stayed at middle-of-the-road hotels. I had three VPNs and mostly used two if the other went down. Mullvad was my main.
Yeah I was just talking to a friend who was there recently and he was the one who told me about being able to get on US apps without VPN
Not all US apps are blocked, anecdotally, I was able to connect to a few blocked services and sites (including hexbear) after arrival on my international roaming before the firewall ‘caught up’ and restricted me. It was about half a day before I had to fire up a VPN to access those. I wouldn’t rely on that at all however.