Apply for visa
If you plan on traveling to china, you must apply for a visa ahead of time. You must show an itinerary, proof of airplane tickets, or have a letter of somebody inviting you to visit the country. Luckily my roommate from Morocco invited me so having a letter from her made the process much smoother. The visa costs about $200 and you will have to mail your passport to the china embassy and wait until the visa is approved and they mail your passport back. It’s important to have this process is mind because it can take about 3 weeks. When the visa is approved you will have it for 10 years. Going to Thailand does not require one.
Things to bring
When traveling to china especially, you MUST bring toilet paper. The bathrooms there are completely different, you squat and pee to the floor if that makes any sense. It was the hardest part to get used to and there is no toilet paper anywhere, it’s like I don’t even know how they clean themselves, but anyhow carrying your own toilet paper everywhere will save you.
Make sure you bring a smart phone with a translator app because NOBODY speaks English, you will become a pro at doing sign language because I swear nobody will understand you.
Also be aware that china is like a million times more advanced than the U.S. Cash or credit card will not get you anywhere, you must download an app called WeChat, which you must have a Chinese SIM card in your phone because with that, you do literally EVERYTHING. It’s like venmo connected to Facebook, Uber, what’s app, everything. That’s how you pay for things in the street, how you catch an Uber, how you rent bikes, without it you will be useless there. Make sure you bring enough cash because at one point we had none and the ATM in china was only in Mandarin. We were basically stranded in the street trying to exchange money with random people in order to pay for our tour to the Great Wall of China.
What to expect
Cheap Things
The reality is that things in China and Thailand are very cheap. There is no reason to bring much, and always remember you can negotiate everything, hustle for bargains! I wish I had known this before because I would of brought less things and had more space to shop and bring them to America. My friend and I ended up buying new suit cases and bringing back 3 times the stuff we had packed.
The Food in China
The food you find in china is not the “chinese” food you are so accustomed to in America. You find random things. Basically anything that has legs and crawls, they eat it. I mean they eat healthy and it’s a bunch of protein, but you have to mentally prepare yourself to eat all of these kinds of foods or be okay with eating at KFC or McDonalds every day. I tried to be open minded and tasted frog legs, duck, lamb, and other things like dumplings and sour chicken, but that was on a lucky day when we found normal Chinese food. Towards the end I was so tired of it all, I would just eat KFC and waited until I got to Thailand to enjoy other food.
The Time Difference
When you are starting your day, friends and family in America are already going to bed. It was kind of hard to communicate with people in America, but eventually you find the time that works for you and your family to stay in touch.
Go With The Flow
Don’t plan things ahead of time, basically have an itinerary of the cities you are visiting and the transportation and lodges but no specific things to do. There is plenty of ways you can negotiate once you are in China or in Thailand and you can always bargain for better prices in the street.
You Will Be FAMOUS in China
Every Chinese person is going to think you are absolutely beautiful and they are going to want to take pictures with you. At first we thought this was kind of cool, but you will be asked like 10 times a day to take pictures with them and it kind of gets annoying. We thought we should start charging them for pictures because they will literally stop us in every corner, it was getting too out of control.
Prostitution Is a Thing
You will make a collection of Chinese girls who make a living from prostitution. Apparently this is legal there and when you wake up every morning, you will find a different business card under your hotel room door from different girls who are seeking money from prostitution. Our first time, we laughed and looked at each other and then after a while, we got used to it and actually kept these for memories.
Booking hotels
Be careful when booking hotels in China. Some of them have specific regulations that they can only rent out rooms to Chinese residents even though it might allow you to do a reservation online. The worst thing happened to us, it was not the end of the world, but it was very inconvenient. We traveled for the entire night to Shanghai, and after taking the subway for about 3 hours to finally get to the hotel and rest, they told us that our booking could not be valid and that we had to find another hotel to stay.
Vaccines
It’s important to look up the countries where you are traveling, especially Thailand because they require a specific immunization called Typhoid. You can either get it in pills or actually get the vaccination. Make sure to visit a local traveling clinic or call your primary care doctor ahead of time because for me it took a lot of calls and planning to finally find somewhere in town where I could get this vaccine prior to traveling.
Bring Pants to Thailand
When visiting temples in Thailand you must cover up your legs with pants before entering the temple. Me and my friend knew this was a thing and we actually prepared by bringing a set of light pants. Somehow, the day we left the Air B&B to go visit a temple we completely forgot. We were forced to purchase those “Typical Thailand” pants outside of the temple and it wasn’t exactly what we wanted, but that was the only way we were going to be allowed inside the temple.
Ping Pong Show in Thailand
This is a MUST. I remember one of my friends telling me about this show where girls will put random things in their vagina. It was real, somehow we ran into a guy in the street that was publicizing this show and I did not think twice and dragged my friends inside. We saw a girl putting a chicken, a frog and tons of ping pong balls inside her vagina and then they would throw it at the crowd, ewww. It was kind of ridiculous, but it was something worth the experience.
VPO in China
As you might know, the government in China is very strict and they prohibit the use of Facebook, Instagram, snapchat, and other social pages in the entire country. That means they do not work on a normal basis and people are not able to communicate through social media except by using WhatsApp or WeChat. If you want to keep using these social apps in your phone you must download a VPO and my Chinese bestie shared this secret with me. You basically upload “VPNProxyMaster” on your iPhone app store and you connect it every time you want to use social media. Easy and simple.
Scams, My Experience
Apparently scams are a thing and after traveling so much I thought it would never happen to me, but it did. Some random guy approached my friend and he insisted he was an English teacher from China and wanted to practice English wish us. He seemed humble and nice and he walked with us and led us to some bar and asked us if we wanted to join him for tea. We talked about the differences in culture between America and China and it all seemed normal but he gave us so many hints that this was a scam and we didn’t realize it until the end.
We were sat in individual rooms it was not like an open bar space. He kept ordering tea without a menu, he would get up order and didn’t ask us what we wanted. When I asked if he had Facebook he said “no” and when I wanted to take a picture he said “You can’t because there is a Buddha in the wall”. After the server brought the bill, we obviously though he was paying for the tea because he was the one that ordered everything. My friend insisted we split it in 3 to be polite, but once we did the calculation from yuan’s to dollars it was going to be $56 each.
Our Jaws dropped, we tripped and did not want to pay it. This was way more than what our flight to Beijing was or even our hostel for 3 days. We were fighting with the guy and he insisted they would call the police on him if we did not pay, but it was not our fault we did not order anything. We ended up leaving to the bathroom and trying to escape without paying, but once we left the bar and we’re about to start running my friend realized she had left her phone was in the bathroom.
I rushed back and as I go inside I see a guy we had met the day before in the Great Wall of china and when I asked him what he was doing there, he said “I just met two Chinese teachers and I’m having tea with them.” At that moment I was like "OMG this is a scam", I yelled and told him this is a scam and that tea is worth $200. We ran off and finally everything made sense.
They basically get tourist to hang out with them and drink tea and make you pay an obnoxious amount of money for it. It is all planned, but luckily we got away and only gave him $15 lol.
I am sure there are some things I may be missing, but I hope this helps you all in case you ever plan on visiting China or Thailand. It will be an unforgettable experience.
<3
Dani