Traveling to Asia is often associated with culinary food, warm weather, and white beaches. Over the years, a new trend has come and where travelers visit Asia for medical purposes.

Visiting countries like Thailand and Malaysia doesn’t only allow you to get hold of high-quality health care for a fraction of the prices back home. You can also take the chance to have a short vacation to recharge your batteries and discover what the countries have to offer.

In this article, you’ll learn more about how it works when visiting Asia for medical care purposes and the benefits. I will cover a range of topics so that you become more prepared before choosing what destination to visit. [Read more…]

Note: If you are only interested on getting a free quotation for a travel insurance, then we recommend World Nomads (click here to get your free quotation).

When I decided to go to China for the first time, finding an affordable and comprehensive health insurance was one of my first concerns, as I knew that, while in my country I was covered by the welfare system, in China I was on my own. This also applies to short-term travelers: unless you have international insurance, you won’t be covered while traveling around Asia.

Why do I need an health insurance when I travel to China?

Health insurance isn’t compulsory when you travel, so you can still go to Asia without any insurance and hope to never get sick, have an accident, lose your luggage or having your flight canceled by a storm.

However, I won’t do it myself. It’s too risky. Especially when you consider that a good travel insurance only costs you a couple of USD per day.

Chinese hospitals are business-oriented and they won’t help you unless you can pay cash in advance or they can verify that you’re covered by adequate medical insurance.

I repeat, if you can’t pay nobody will help you. Also, international hospitals in China (where doctors and nurses can speak English) are often more expensive than hospitals in the U.S.

I’ve heard plenty of horror stories of western tourists or expats that were left to die or lose a foot in an Asian hospital because, after being a victim of an accident or bad food poisoning, they didn’t have insurance or enough cash to pay for the emergency treatments they needed. Can you afford to pay 5,000 or 10,000 USD cash? [Read more…]

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There are many ways to unravel yourself from the vastness of Chinese cities: taxis, didis, buses, bikes, on foot, by train.

One of the most comfortable ways to get around the various parts of the city, is without a doubt the metro, which you’ll find in the majority of the large Chinese cities (more than 40 cities offer a metro system, including Hong Kong and Macao, and many that don’t have one are building metro systems or expanding existing ones).

It’s fast, comfortable, cheap, high-tech, clean and well-developed, but alas, often overcrowded (especially on certain routes during certain times).
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This guide contains pretty much all the info that you’ll need to prepare your trip to China. However, note that in this article we don’t go into detail about any tourist destination or itinerary.

If you’d like to learn more about a particular destination, The Great Wall of China at Mutianyu, for example, click here to access our collection of tourist guides.

If you want to learn more about a particular touristic itinerary, click here.

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Do you plan to visit China and want to get some better bargaining skills?

The Chinese are way more used to bargaining than many foreigners. Therefore, it can be worthwhile to learn some standard phrases and common pitfalls beforehand.

This can save you a decent amount of money as it’s not rare that shopkeepers add markups in the multiples.

In this article, you’ll learn more about bargaining in China and what you should do to get the lowest price possible.

Is it difficult to bargain in China?

In short, yes it is. Why? First of all, this is not only prevalent when walking to local markets to buy clothes, for example. The Chinese are well-known for being persistent and skilled in negotiations, this also applies to the corporate world.

If you join a Chinese to a local market, you’ll notice that the haggling-process and atmosphere can become a bit tense. Many westerners aren’t used to haggling in this way, a reason why many don’t get the upper and pay a higher price. [Read more…]

This article gives an informative list of the vaccines necessary for traveling to China, East Asia and Southeast Asia.

Before anything else, it is essential that you book an appointment with a specialist doctor at an approved international vaccination center or at a travel clinic (many public and private hospitals have one), preferably two months in advance of your departure date.

These are the only types of centers where you will receive up-to-date and detailed advice on all of the vaccines recommended for your trip.
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A Chinese class K train.

Trains are a primary form of transport and certainly the most widespread for extra-urban movement in China, by which you can reach just about every corner of this immense country.

How to buy a train ticket in China

First of all, it’s important to understand that if you plan to buy your train ticket at the train station, or using the official China Rail website, you can only buy a train ticket starting from 28 or 30 days before your trip, respectively (even if for some trains of C and D categories the period is even shorter).

Reservations usually open 30 days before departure for online bookings and 28 days before departure for sale at stations, for most long-distance trains. Some overnight D-category sleeper trains only open 20 days ahead, some C-category trains only 10 days ahead. You cannot buy tickets before reservations open.

The problem is that, in particular during peak seasons – Spring Festival (in January or February), May Day (May 1st), National Day (October 1st) and Summer Holidays (from July to August) – you should buy your ticket as soon as possible or you’ll risk that tickets will already be sold out. [Read more…]