A couple years back in 80% of the cases I would have answer "Travel agency". In Germany there are travel agencies all over the place. Small individual ones that are specialized in trips to exotic countries or cruises and the standard ones that offer trips all around the globe. For our trip to New Zealand we used Umfulana. It's a smaller agency which offers individual roundtrips with a camper or car in different countries. That was almost 7 years ago.
I just read really positive feedback and it seemed the best way back then. We didn't have much free time to research because I was at the end of university with the final exams coming up. Don't get me wrong but we could have saved hundreds of dollars/euros if we would have organized the trip ourselves. It was one of the best vacations we had but considering the price it could have been way cheaper.
We stayed at little private BnBs that were all run by the family. They did it because they enjoyed having people from all over the world at their house, talk to them and enjoy the company. Basically the idea behind Airbnb. We loved this kind of travel and Airbnb was our first source for finding stays abroad ever since.
Nowadays you can almost buy and book everything online. So we didn't actually spend a second thinking about booking our china trip through a travel agency. Our friends in Beijing suggested Ctrip which is basically a combination of Booking.com, Skyscanner.com and Deutschbahn (the big German railway company). We booked all the domestic flights and train rides via ctrip and the hotels on booking.com. I'm not sure why I chose booking over ctrip but the rates were almost identical. Before we book a hotel we double check on tripadvisor or a different platform if the ratings are good and the "photos look nice".
The flights from Germany to Beijing were booked directly via the Emirates website. The booking process was really easy and the available connections were perfect for us. We thought about staying one night in Dubai but decided to fly to Dubai another time to have more days to explore the city and surrounding areas. I really want to ride some camels 🐫
What's left? The Yangtze cruise. Actually we booked the cruise via Yangtze River Cruises. It's still the most questionable part of our upcoming trip. We read really bad stuff about this cruise. Mainly because of the big dam which was build between 1993 and 2008. This project is still discussed pretty controversial. But we decided to go regardless. We will make our own experience and will be happy to share it with you.
No AirBnB! We actually didn't look on Airbnb in China. I guess mainly because we are not comfortable staying at somebodies place and don't speak the native language at all. Does Airbnb even offer places in China?
What kind of travels do you enjoy? Flying abroad and see what's going on? Going to your local travel agency and let them make suggestions? Let me know!
Have great day!!!
Photo credit:
- Marcus Zymmer on Unsplash
- Andy Al Mesura on Unsplash
