10 Days in the Red.

My daughter and I head to China for 10 days. I have never traveled with a tour before. I am more of freerbird, wandering from place to place seeing what I find. But with China's high security and neither of us speaking Mandarin we thought it better to see China with a free-range tour with SmartTours. It was the best decision.

We traveled with the tour, went through security with the tour but spent our days doing what we wanted. We started in Beijing, traveled to Sheinghai and finished in Xi'An.

My first travel tip before going to China: Once in the country you will not have access to any U.S. based websites including any news media, Facebook, Instagram and other social media. All internet access in China is blocked and then filtered. They reproduce news for what they want their citizens to hear. They dont allow access to social media. Everything is controlled. It's a communist country. A tip to get around all this is donwload a VPN before you go. Once in the control a VPN allows you to log in through Los Angeles a vertual worm hole bypassing China's security and you will be able to access your needed website and social media.

Second travel tip before going to China: If you choose to go on a tour, don't be confined to the tour events. We chose only to stay with our tour for two days: great wall of China and Terracotta Army. The other days we planned where we wanted to go and we were able to get in seven or eight locations in one day while the tour (for additional money) took people to two or three locations. Plus we had freedom to move when we wanted to. To get around, before we went to China i created littel flash cards with Mandarin and English of each location we planned on going to and our hotels we were staying in so I could show a taxi driver where to take us. I laminated each card and punched a hole and put them on a ring so I could flip through them as needed.

We let us our tour guide know we would not be with the tour during the day and he had us check in with him each night at his room when we got back so he knew we made it back to the hotel okay.

There is way to much for just this one post so I will make additional posts of our travels of 10 days in the red.