Entries from April 2007 ↓

I recommend two hotel booking sites. One is elong. This is a US listed company with powerful resources in China flight and hotel booking. I think it is the only company that offers online flight ticket booking in China. 

The hotel range is wide, and its booking service is quick. I made an online hotel booking, and they acknowledged receipt of request via email in two minutes and confirmed the booking through mobile phones in five minutes! I was impressed.

Besides good service, if you can read Chinese, go to their Chinese version and you will find lots of hotel users’ comments, very useful in helping you to identify a good hotel. Comments on some hotels are a few pages long. And the comment is aggregated into an overall rating.

It is a shame that the English hotel booking interface does not have user comment - well it is understandable. The site has much fewer English speaking users than Chinese users. It is another shame that the English page is not automatically shifted to the corresponding page in Chinese when you change the language option. You cannot therefore, just by one click, see the overall rating of the same hotel by Chinese users.

On elong, you can search hotels based on pricing. Once you push the pricing based search button, the cheapest hotels will come on the top. It is helpful for those on a tight budget.

Also, you don’t need a visa card to make reservation. Well, some hotels do require you to make the booking with visa cards if your checking in time is after 6pm and you want to be sure of a room during the public holiday like the Golden Week in May and October. But the visa cards they need usually are those issued in China. So avoid checking in after 6pm, or just take the risk of not having a room - the risk is minimal anyway.

If you travel to China and think about getting a China visa, consider stopping by Macau, the former Portugal colony. The city has a China Travel Service agency at the city centre, which can process a 90-day single-entry China visa for you within one day, for only HK$240 (about 24 euro). But be sure to hand in your application before 10:30am and you will get the visa at about 6pm the same day.

It is possible that you apply for a double-entry China visa in Macau. But you will have to wait until the following day, for HK$340 (about 34 euro).

Do not expect to have a half-day express service, though the agency’s website says so.

And remember that there is also a China Travel Service agency at the macau ferry pier, but it does not handle China visa applications. You must go to the one in the city centre. Bring the money and a photo, fill in a form, and you will have the visa.

Address of China Travel Services (Macau) in the city centre:

Avenida do Dr. Rodrigo Rodrigues, nºs 223-225, Edifício Nam Kuong, 1º andar “A” e 12º andar “A”, Macau

Tel: (853) 2870 0888; Website: http://www.ctsmacau.com ( unfortunately, mostly in Chinese only)

To view the China visa web page of China Travel Services (Macau), click here.

Hong Kong is also a good place for foreigners to get a China visa, but not as good as Macau. If you go to the many China Travel Service centres across the territory for a China visa, it takes normally 3 days, and you can get a one-month visa only. You have to show that you have been to China (such as a China visa stamped on your passport) in order to get a 3-month visa.

Well, there are a lot more flights to Hong Kong from different parts of the world. It is true that it is more convenient for you to stop by Hong Kong than Macau. But going to Macau from Hong Kong is convenient (one-hour ferry journey). You can also directly leave Macau for China - there are frequent daily buses going to Guangzhou from Macau.

Related:

Get a China visa in Macau (part 2)

Macau visa 

Multiple-entry China visas stopped 

Manda School of Chinese, the first Chinese language school in Hangzhou, has disappeared. Strictly speaking, it has not disappeared, but whose name has been changed to Chinesetown Language Institute. Obviously, there has been major management overhaul. I notice that its website is very confusing. Just to cite some examples. Is its official name Chinesetown Language Institute, or Chinestown School of Chinese, as shown on its contact page? And look at the title on the home page “lean chinese in china’s best Tourist city”. Does the visual look strange to you?

Onto another Chinese language school in Hangzhou. A new language school emerges and it is Mandarin Capital. It was first set up in Beijing and now expands to Hangzhou. If you know of the quality of teaching of the school, do drop a note here.

The TEFL Academy is a private company in China whose main business is teaching English. It now expands into teaching Mandarin at Hangzhou. I mentioned the school before in this blog. It recently set up a new website, call itself great wall mandarin.

There are Nova Language Training Centre, and Babel Language Centre. As TEFL, their main business is teaching English but now they also offer part-time Chinese language courses to expatriates.

All the schools mentioned above are located in the yellow dragon area of Hangzhou. Nova and TEFL are even located on the same floor, and in the same building. Except Babel, all other schools are in modern office buildings with nice classrooms.

Yellow Dragon is a prime business area in Hangzhou - no wonder all the Chinese language schools crowd into the area. It is about 10-minute bike to the famous West Lake, and the third Starbucks in Hangzhou opened there in May 2006, a testimony to the rising importance of the area. The first two Starbucks are in the West Lake area.

For the contact details of the schools, check out the listing here. As for the quality and atmosphere of the schools, then you have to do your own research.