Posted: 23 April 2009 at 3:33am | IP Logged

In the following a few useful travel tips for those who always wanted to make the adventurous journey to Shaolin.

Trip to Shaolin

The easy way for beginners and non-chinese speakers:

If you travel for the first time to China, we recommend to fly to Zhengzhou. It is important to know that your luggage is not automatically passed on at Beijing airport! You must collect your bags and check in again to your connection flight to Zhengzhou.

Further on you should go by taxi. At the airport of Zhengzhou thousands of taxi drivers will be happy to drive you anywhere. The communication should still be no big problem here because everyone knows and understands the word "Shaolin". The best thing would be to write down the Chinese characters for Shao Lin Si and the price you want to pay. The travel should cost 250 Yuan at maximum (this is already very generous, 180 Yuan is standard). The travel takes about 2-3 hours (for only 75 km distance!), but that also depends on the mood of the driver.

The cheap variant for Chinese-speaking cracks:

Who knows a little bit Chinese and stop at nothing, can try to travel to Shaolin without a connection flight. After your arrival in Beijing you have to look for a taxi driver, although this can turn out to be a pain in the neck. Then you must try to explain that - perhaps with the help of a dictionary (sometimes also with the help of your hands and feet) - you want to go to the railway station - huo zhe chan -. The taxameter runs inexorably and negotiating is quite useless here. At the railway station in Beijing is one special ticket counter for foreigners, where English is spoken. There you can buy a ticket (at any case with seat!!!!) to Zhengzhou. After 8 arduous hours of travel you must recognize by yourself, which railway station is Zhengzhou (at best you sometimes ask some Chinese people whether you reached Zhengzhou or you remember the time of the arrival - the trains in china are very puncutal), because the announcements is usually incomprehensible. Possibly it is night and you have to look for accomadation (opposite of the station is a cheap hotel) because busses to Deng Feng or Shaolin go only by day. The long distance bus station is at the opposite of the railway station. There you can buy a bus ticket for 7 Yuan to Deng Feng. The first bus goes at 9:00 o'clock, the last at 16:00 o'clock and after 3-4 hours in an overcrowded bus you will arrive Deng Feng. Here you must change the bus and for 2 (or 1 Yuan) Yuan you will be brought to Shaolin. This variant is substantially pedantic and the journey takes a whole day longer, but who wants to save money, you can try it!

For more information please take a look at http://www.shaolin-wushu.de or http://www.trip-to-china.com.

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