dashely

How do you plan for lots of shorter tours? I have a 4 week break in February and an 8-week holiday in the summer. OK those may not be what others look at as short tours. As my holidays are payed I try to keep the cost to less than I make during the holiday.

I have been planning holidays/tours by looking for cheap flight tickets but I am wondering if there is a better way to pick locations to tour. I take a lot of trips to Europe. My last tour I used a Montague bike but found the bike too big for carrying boxed with all other gear down and up two flights of stairs in order to get the one-hour train to Shanghai. As such on my last trip to the states I order a bike with S&S couplings to make the logistics of getting to the airport easier. I am somewhat of a slow tourer only going about 50 miles a day average speed. I tour with the goal of seeing the area and taking time to enjoy each day. As such I have a high likelihood of stopping at a small museum and taking time to see other local sites.
Debra

saddlesores

would help to know where you're located. assume you're teaching near shanghai.
would also help to know what your interests are. cheap flights to mordor don't make
much sense unless you're an orc.

by montague, i guess you mean the folding swiss-army hummer. extremely heavy
frame, especially if you have the suspension model.

bad news, as of january-ish, no more bikes on trains in china. must send by
baggage car, if the train has one. even then, it's space available, so may be
on the next or the next-next train. if no baggage car, railway express trucks.

good news, railway express vans go (almost) everywhere the trains do, are
fast and efficient and cheap, and no need to box your bike. can send your
stuff ahead, take a train or plane a few days to a week later.

china be really big, and really diverse. no need to fly to europe or the usa to
find someting different. awesome riding in guangxi and yunnan in the winter,
maybe try gansu or xinjiang in the summer.

can easily tour in china for less than your vacation pay. budget 150 rmb/day
(excluding transport) outside of the big mega-cities.

you could ship your bike/gear to haikou, take a train a few days later. do a
tour around the island over 10-12 days. towns are spaced out just about
right (and it's mostly flat) for your daily rides.

not enough? cheap flights daily from haikou to singapore. start a short tour
there (tree in lodge hostel gives 50% discount to touring cyclists!), or catch
a cheap flight to bangkok or phnom penh or yangon.

dashely

saddlesores

thank you for your reply.

I am in Jiaxing, Zheijang. One hour or 90 minutes depending on the number of stops south of Shanghai by slow train(T and K).
Have to tell you on the bikes on train I have always been told if it is in a box and you can carry it on you can have it. Last trip with the montague was in June.

As For touring in China I have given it little thought. I work a 50+ hour week with no conversation outside of class unless I Skype a friend. By the end of term the lack of conversation and being sick of city life China has a lot to my lack of thought of touring in it. I working a office as the only non-Chinese so all required meetings and office chat is in Chinese, with the only location I know of to meet with other western being a bar between 9-11pm I don't have social life and want to get away from the freak treatment. When the endless city weekend rides are added in I have a low view of touring in China, that could be from not living in a good part of China.

As for budget with a holiday pay of 3000USD a month, Europe has been very affordable.

I enjoy museums, art, old builds(pre 1900), food as well as nature sites.

Debra

Robert C

I happen to know she has a Montague Boston 8

Robert C

The OP has seen me tour in China. I have made several trips, usually between 3 and 5 days, sometimes more. I am not trying to speak poorly about China, I enjoyed touring in China; but I can see the things she observed that turned her off. She also tried touring with me once and, to be frank, she got bored; the landscape never changed (really, it was just the place we were starting from, Taizhou, Jiangsu).

We really should have started somewhere like Xinyang, Henan (my preferred starting point).

As far as using rail freight. I have used it on several occasions. You really cannot plan on your bike arriving within 5 days. As such, your vacation plan needs a lot of non-riding activity built into it. That isn't the main problem with rail freight.

The main problem is that it is hard to find, and for some, hard to use. The rail freight is not at all train-stations. Further, the people at the passenger stations seldom know where the freight office is, even when it is at the same station.

Further, the forms are hard for some to fill out (I know, it isn't that hard; however, the OP speaks less Chinese than I do). The real problem with the forms is that you need to give a phone number of a person who speaks Chinese, and from experience, it needs to be to the dialect of the station, not just putng hua.

saddlesores

cool bike, looks like a modified hummer. you've got double
tubes at the top instead of the single girder. rear triangle
and lock mechanism same-same.

yes, i know the drawbacks to china. have been here nearly
ten years, would to insane without annual or semiannual
decompression sessions.

still some great scenery.....you know....like tibet. couldn't
complain about that scenery. expensive, but you can get
similar scenery and ethnic groups in northern yunnan and
western sichuan. or could try the rainforest and dai minority
villages in xishuangbanna.

here in hainan, my daily rides take me through pineapple
plantations, coconut groves, dirt tracks along the beach
and through rice fields. oh, and no pollution here.

but, okay, let's get out of china.

fly to phnom penh, do a circuit including angkor wat and
preah vihear over spring festival.

for summer, fly to bangkok and cycle back. north thru
laos into xishuangbanna. once you hit kunming you're
back into train service area. bankok to kunming. i can
guarantee you plenty of variety.

or you could fly to saigon, cycle to hanoi, catch the train to
nanning, then cycle through the karst mountains to changsha,
then train back to school.