Safety in Beijing

Hi. My wife and I are planning on visiting Beijing for the first time.

Is it better to travel around ourselves or to join a tour? We are concerned about safety as well as ease of travel. We%26#39;ll be leaving San Francisco, and then spending several days in Hong Kong before traveling to Beijing. Any advice or tour recommendations?

Safety in Beijing

Beijing is pretty safe for a big city. It is also not that difficult to visit many things on your own.

Places like the Forbidden City, Lama Temple, and Summer Palace in Beijing are easy to get to by subway or taxi.

Many places have audioguides, if you want to learn more about what you are seeing.

Most hotels also will help arrange a car to the Great Wall, and most also offer tours to the Great Wall, but these will go to Badaling, which is not really the best section to visit.

A drawback of tours is that they usually go to lousy restaurants and take you to visit ';factories'; where the tour guides get kickbacks for everything that you buy.

Although it sometimes makes sense to use tours if you visit multiple cities, I don%26#39;t think there is any need to visit Beijing on a tour.

Safety in Beijing

dont worry the safety in Beijing,its a rough idea about sights to join a tour,if you want to spend more time and have a ease tour inside sights,just do it by yourself.you also can hire a tour guide from tripadvisor.have a nice trip.

I guess the biggest safety concern would be those tea-house scams. Even that, it%26#39;s not physcial assault or anything.

%26gt;%26gt;go to lousy restaurants

They may be lousy, but unlikely to serve fake soy sauce/rice/orange/egg etc... :)

My husband and I are planning a trip in July to Beijing. What is Tea house scam? I was hoping to visit a tea house. Is there something I need to know about that?

Thank you,

Tracy

Beijing is a pretty safe city. You do have to be aware of usual scams (tea house, art students, cab drivers taking you the long way back to your hotel) but the punishment for crime is so severe and Beijing officials are very concerned with tourism that I have heard of almost no violent crime towards tourists.

It is also VERY easy to get around. The subway runs in one giant loop and is very easy to navigate. There are also cabs everywhere. Be aware, however, that at least when I was there 2 years ago - very very few people speak English in Beijing unlike Hong Kong or Shanghai. It can be disconcerting at first but If you get in a cab just have your location written down by the hotel desk and you should be fine. The best bet I have heard is to hand the cab driver the location written upside down b/c many cab drivers do not read but will pretend like they can read where you want to go. (If they don%26#39;t turn it upside down then get out!) Also hail a cab down off the street - ones already parked outside your hotel are rip offs. (If you speak Mandarin then you have one less worry...)

As for tours, I agree with the other post --I wouldn%26#39;t do any in Beijing - you will spend 1/2 the day at pointless places where peddlers will try to sell you stuff. Also, it is really cheap to rent a cab for the day and go to Ming Tombs and Great Wall. Tours will make 3 pointless stops to get you to buy crap and drop you off at the most touristy areas of the Great Wall. If you are concerned about finding your way around, just research tours first. I did do one Hutong Tour that was really good.

Finally, never never pay full price. You can bargain over cans of soda...Again, Beijing is really safe but milking tourists has become a science to them!

extension to sqltableprovider