We have traveled to China several times and visited the major tourist attractions. For
our new trip in September/October 2003 we wanted to visit parts of China we had not
seen before. We decided to make our main destination Yunnan Province in the
southwestern corner of China bordering Tibet, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, and Vietnam.
Yunnan is a fairly remote province not often visited by foreign tourists.
From the USA we flew via Tokyo to Beijing, China's capital and largest city. After a flight
from Beijing to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province, our trip was by public buses,
first to the ancient town of Dali, then to Lijiang near the Yangtze River’s Tiger Leaping
Gorge, and on to Zhongdian near the border with Tibet. Leaving Yunnan Province we flew
east to Guilin on the scenic Li River and then to Shanghai to go by train to China’s former
capital of Nanjing. After our stay in Nanjing we took an overnight sleeper train to Beijing
for the flight back to the USA.
We wanted our trip to be as flexible as possible and therefore kept advance
reservations to a minimum. Before leaving for the trip we bought airline tickets from the
USA to Beijing and return. As our flight was scheduled to arrive in Beijing in the late
evening we thought it best to use the Internet from home to reserve through a Chinese
travel agency our hotel for the first night in Beijing; we used the same agency to also
reserve our flight the next day to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province. We had no
other reservations but by reading travel guides we had a good idea where to go and
what to see. For each stopover we noted what we thought would be our best hotel or
guesthouse choices.
The story of our trip is outlined on the following pages.
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