Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

We spent a lot of time budgeting our money for this trip and a lot Iof the times it was really difficult to find up to date or accurate information. Fortunately though we ended up coming in more or less exactly on budget. Some cities we were over and others we were under. So for those of you trying to plan a similar journey here’s what we did and how much it cost us. For those of you who just read this to keep track of us. Skip this. It’s boring.

Out first stop was Beijing. Because of the ridiculously crowded train we ended up spending 2 days and 1 night less there than we had planned which actually worked out not too bad. You should note that all of these prices are for 2 people and in RMB

Budget for 5 days / 4 nights
Food: 780
Transportation: 295
Accommodation: 312
Extras: 910

What we actually paid and how we did it.
Food: 501. The first day we were actually quite a bit over budget on food. It takes a while to figure out what is a good price for food and where you can find it. We bought a few things at a little supermarket to eat for breakfast. We filled our water bottles at the hostel for free with the water cooler and we ate a lot of dumplings from the street vendors. We still did eat in a couple of restaurants though.

Transportation: 100. We walked. A lot. One day we hired bicycles which allowed us to see a good deal of the city but if we weren’t cycling or walking we took the metro. It was in English close to our hostel and relatively painless. Not to mention it’s cheap.
Hotel: 280. We booked ahead online. Something we did in all of the Chinese cities. We weren’t really comfortable enough not to do this. We stayed at Candy Inn in an 8 bed dorm.
Extras: 888. This includes things like admission to the forbidden city the temple of heaven and our tour of the great wall.

The last piece of the Beijing budget is the cost of moving on to out next destination. We had planned on taking an overnight train to Pingyao at 468RMB for two. That was booked though and we ended up taking a D class daytime train to Taiyuan and then a local train to Pingyao which only cost 392. //

Pingyao budget for 2 days and 1 night

Food: 182
Transportation: 0
Hotel: 52
Extra: 234

The real deal.

Food: 215. We probably could have cut down on this but we just decided not to. Since we had saved a bit of money in Beijing by leaving early we ate well. We only ate in restaurants and splurged on a couple of coffees.
Transportation: 20. We decided to rent bicycles again instead of walking around.
Hotel: 100. We went for a private room. We definitely could have gone cheaper in a dorm.
Extras: 302. We had originally intended to buy the Pingyao city pass but instead went for a massage and bought some souvenirs.
The moral of the Pingyao story is that we could have stayed on budget but it’s a city that deserves a little splurging in order to really enjoy it.
We budgeted 273 to travel overnight to Xian but we could only get a local class train for 166. So it all evened out in the end.

Xian budget 4 days 3 nights
Food: 312
Transportation: 104
Hotel: 156
Extra: 585

The scoop.

Food: 463. This is probably not a fair cost. We found a walmart in Xian and stocked up on some stuff. Street food was also a bit harder to find outside of the Muslim quarter.
Transportation: 8. The buses are cheap. Really cheap.
Hotel: 180. We stayed in a really nice hostel — that also provided free pick up from the train station so it was worth the little extra. We stayed in a 8 bed dorm room again.
Extras: 583. We had hoped to be spending this money on seeing the terracotta warriors and going to a panda reserve but unfortunately the pandas were closed and we went to famen temple instead. We opted out of a tour for both the warriors and the temple and did both on our own using the tour buses near the train station.

Our next stop was Nanjing we budgeted 546 for an overnight but of course it was sold out so we took an overnight to Hefei for 464 and then caught another train to Nanjing for 134.

Nanjing budget for 3 days and 3 nights. //
Food: 234
Transportation: 156
Hotel: 273
Extras: 130

It’s not of much value for me to write about how much we actually spent as we met up with friends who picked up the tab for everything we did. I will say that Nanjing had really great street food if you were in the right area so the food budget was probably pretty accurate. The hotel actually cost us a whopping 585 because the budget options are terrible in Nanjing and we ended up having to stay in a hotel-GreenTree was the cheapest we could find and was alright.

Our next destination was Suzhou at a budgeted 156. We could only get standing tickets for 66.

The Suzhou budget for 2 days 2 nights
Food: 156
Transportation: 78
Hotel: 156
Extra: 130

What actually happened.
Food: 161. Again street food was a little harder to come by but still pretty close to budget. We ate in a couple of Chinese fast food places.
Transportation: 47. We had to take a taxi to and from the bus station which was the majority of this. It’s generally small enough to walk around.
Accommodation: 120. We stayed at Lohas Hostel which was a decent location and pretty good value for what we paid. They had just opened so we were pretty much the only guests.
Extra: 240. We went on a nighttime cruise around the canal that kind of blew the extras budget.

We budgeted 195 to take the train to Hangzhou but opted for the bus instead at 142.

Hangzhou budget for 2 days and 2 nights.
Food: 156
Transportation: 78
Accommodation: 156
Extra: 130

The low down.
Food: 180. We ate at the hostel a couple of times which brought up the price but we did find one small restaurant but it was well hidden.
Transportation: 64. The bus station was quite far out of the city so we had quite an expensive cab ride to get to our hostel.
Hostel: 80. This may have been a mistake. We stayed at the FourEyes hostel which had decent ratings online but was quite a bit cheaper than the others and unfortunately had cockroaches. //
Extra: 30. We spent most of our time there wandering around the free parks.

To get to Shanghai we had hoped to spend 78 to take the train but took he nice one for 108.

Shanghai budget for 4 days and 4 nights.
Food: 624
Transportation: 236
Accommodation: 832
Extras: 650

How it went down in China’s most expensive city.
Food: 745. We splurged on one meal while we were in the city and then decided it wasn’t worth it. Instead we ate most of our main meals at the family run restaurant next to our hostel.
Transportation: 46. For a city with so many people it’s surprisingly compact. Walk.
Hostel: 640. We stayed in a great place Mingtown Hikers Hostel. 4 bed dorm washer and dryer good location. What more could you ask for.
Extras: 874. We went to expo which was expensive and we may have partied a bit too much.

Getting to Hong kong ended up costing us 1450 for plane tickets because the train that we budget for at 806 was booked solid.

One of the greatest tips we picked up while in China was finding out about student prices. For a lot of places they have a student price that can be up to 50% off the regular admission. They always ask for a student ID but we used our drivers licenses and it worked just peachy.
The trains are an ok value for your money but check into the buses. It’s worth paying the extra for a seat if you can as the hard seat class can be miserable. If you have an option stay away from the trains that don’t have a letter in the train number. They’re pretty raw.