Travel Advice

Traveling to China is a great adventure. The people are so open and truly happy with the sight of you and your child. In our experiences the local people have found us to be a tourist attraction and make comments such as "Lucky Baby" and they want to touch the child for good luck and a long happy life. Often the local people want you to take their picture and will pose for you. This is not always the case but it happens more times than not.

We have been to The Great Wall of China both times we have traveled. It is so amazing and truly a sight you must see if the opportunity presents itself. It is a very difficult climb but the views are more than worth it.

We have also been to the Forbidden City, and it can only be described as awesome. The architecture is incredible given the tools used, the manpower required (one very large slab of carved marble was pulled along the streets that were frozen just to move the carving to its final resting spot), and the craftsmanship. We have been two times and have not seen the entire thing yet. Our first trip we also saw the Summer Palace outside of Beijing, which was very beautiful. We also went to some temples, both in Beijing and in Guangzhou. There is something amazing and incredible to see at every turn. Two of our trips have provided us with the wonderful opportunity to have the children blessed at a Buddhist Temple by the resident monks. Another place that we suggest you visit if given the opportunity is the local peasant markets. These markets are usually open air markets for the locals to purchase their daily meals - it is not a place to visit for the squeamish as they have a live animal section. There are many unusual items to view such as herbs, dried lizards, dried bats, fish, live scorpions and turtles just to name a few.

You MUST remember that you CANNOT DRINK THE WATER when you travel to China. This also includes ICE. You are rarely served ice but you must be very cautious. The only place that we have found that you can have ice that is served is the Hard Rock Café in Guangzhou, as they make it with distilled water. You must drink bottled water or the boiled water provided in your hotel rooms. Bottled water is easily obtained at most stores and very inexpensive. You will even find Perrier or other familiar brands. Stock up when you can. We usually always had 3 large bottles between the two of us at all times. In warmer months it is recommended that you have more than that. We traveled the third time in very warm and humid weather. We found that we looked forward to a cold drink when we arrived back at our hotel. We frequented many grocery stores to buy soda, water and beer to keep in our mini bar in our hotel room. We have gone to the Hard Rock Café (which is located at the China Hotel in Guangzhou) two times, we found that a Pizza Hut delivers good pizza directly to the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou. There is also a good deli that serves great desserts right around the corner from the White Swan.

Eastern toilets are another experience all together! Be sure to bring some toilet paper or flushable wipes with you in your fanny pack. Also, bring some small alcohol wipes with you for cleaning your hands and sometimes your eating utensils- just to be on the safe side.

When you travel to China you must remember that many of the people there understand English and some will try their language skills out on you. If you venture out to explore try to remember to bring a card or stationary from your hotel. It has helped us get back "home" on a few occasions.

Power outlets

We have found that our electrical converters work in most of the hotels we stayed in. This made it convenient to charge the video camera’s batteries and use our blow dryer. We also discovered that we had to try out some of the different outlets around the room. The converter worked in some but not others- the converters rarely worked in the bathroom outlets.

Video & Cameras

We have brought both a 35mm camera (with LOTS and LOTS of film) and a video camera. Both were used a great deal. We had our film developed in China on our second trip and they came out beautifully. They were developed within a day. This way we were able to share pictures with some of the people that we traveled with. The first trip we waited until we arrived home. All three trips we took approximately 11 rolls of film 24 exposures each. The first trip we have 4 hours of video, the second trip we have a little over 2 hours of video and the third trip about 2 hours of video. We decided, on our first trip, to video tape the countryside on a long bus ride. It was great having the footage of the tea plants, the rice fields, some farmers working in their fields and the local rural areas. It was not great to have the sound of the bus and road noise.

Souvenirs

Plan to purchase souvenirs in the child's province. Shopping is an experience. We were unsure at first how to make a purchase. It is unusual in that in some stores you pick out something that you would like to purchase, and in some cases you are able to negotiate the marked price, then the salesperson writes up a receipt and hands it to you. You then have to go find the cashier, without the merchandise, to pay for the item(s), then you go back to the salesperson to retrieve the merchandise. There are many vendors at the Great Wall , some with the exact same merchandise as another. You MUST negotiate the price of the item. If you are unhappy with the price that one vendor is saying WALK AWAY! They will often run after you and you can usually get the price you wanted to pay. On our last trip (June 2000), the exchange rate was about 800 Yuan per $100.00 US. You also must remember that you should only exchange money at your hotel's front desk and only exchange what you think you will need. You are not able to exchange the money once you are back in the US. We purchased some jade jewelry for each of the girls. That's a very popular item in China! Some other friends purchased some gold charms for their children. Some families that we traveled with purchased some gifts to give their daughter for each of her birthdays. We're not quite sure how much space they had in their luggage!! We were able to purchase many souvenirs on our third trip due to the extra space in our luggage from the large donation of infant sleepers. We bought some really ornate kites to hang in the girls' bedrooms, some lovely watercolor scrolls, some beautiful silk dresses and jackets, some pearl necklaces and some jade pieces. We have also purchased some wooden wedding boxes for each of the girls and some miniature replicas of the imperial foo dogs. We are so pleased to be able to share a small sampling of the vast assortment of cultural items with our friends, family and most especially our daughters. We love to tell our girls that many, many wonderful things are Made in China …including them!!

As far as packing for your trip, pack just enough clothes that you will need. The laundry services provided in most hotels is great. Bring diapers (the ultratrim style for easier packing) for an infant. You can buy them in local stores but we have always brought all we would need with us. Don't bring jarred food for the child. If they can eat food they will eat some of the food served at the restaurants or hotels. - Our 8 ½-month old and our 9-month old were eating egg custard, cereal, noodles, vegetables, tofu and some other soft foods . We brought the canned, dry formula and mixed it with either the bottled water or the boiled water at the hotels. We found that it was much easier to pack and use the disposable style bottles and liners. We also found that you need to get the nipples that are for older infants or juice style. We brought the soy-based formula for our first trip and milk-based for the other 2 trips. It used to be considered a given that the children were all lactose intolerant. This is no longer thought to be the case. All three of our children had no problem with lactose intolerance. We did find that all of them liked to have their formula sweet. We had packed some sugar packets and used a very small amount and, in a few days, we had lessened the amount of sugar in each bottle and in a matter a less than a week none of them needed the extra sweetness added. They are all very good eaters and have continued to be.

We highly recommend that you bring some "comfort" foods for yourselves. We have brought breakfast bars, candy, instant oatmeal, tea bags, crackers, cookies, instant coffee packets and sugar packets. There were occasionally times that we were unable to make it to a meal, and it was great having something to eat with us. Some other items that had some in very handy to us were small plastic cups and plastic eating utensils, especially if you do not have the knack for using chopsticks or if you have a child that eats table food. It is MUCH easier to feed a child with a fork or a spoon than with chopsticks. Also plan to bring lots of antibacterial soap and wipes, alcohol wipes and disposable rubber gloves. The gloves are to use for many occasions, but most importantly for the first few days of dirty diapers. The gloves have come in very handy. Our second daughter came to us with a parasite in her tummy. While it did not bother her or require any treatment, it would not have been good to have contracted that in one of us especially while traveling!!! It is always better to be overly cautious than not at all. We both were sick with a stomach ailment on our second trip and ran out of imodium. We brought tons for the third trip and did not need it once! So every trip is different . Thank goodness. We would recommend that you bring any and all medications that you think you may need. It is very difficult to find items like deodorant, aspirin, saline solution, imodium etc. We brought more than we thought we would need and shared with our travel mates when need arose.