Where to Go for May Day / May Day Zhangjiajie Travel
May Day Zhangjiajie Travel First, determine your travel destination. Before setting your travel goal, you should first consider time, and secondly, your financial capacity. Combining these two factors, you can basically determine the general direction of your destination. Although it's a self-guided tour, hiring a guide seems to make it more reassuring, especially if you're traveling alone, at least the guide can chat with you. The advantage of hiring a guide is also that they can explain in more detail along the way...
Zhangjiajie travel during May Day — first, decide on your destination.
Before setting your travel goal, the first thing to consider is time, and the second is your budget. Combining these two factors, you can basically determine the general direction of your destination.
Although it's independent travel, hiring a guide seems to make things more reassuring, especially if you're traveling alone — at least the guide can chat with you. The advantages of hiring a guide also include: they can explain the sights along the way in more detail, help you avoid unnecessary detours, and help you get a 30% discount on accommodation. The cost of a guide is generally 50 RMB per day for groups of fewer than six people, and about 80 to 100 RMB per day for groups of six or more. Split among everyone, it's not expensive — unless you're traveling alone (in which case it's still 50 RMB).
Then decide on transportation. Bus? Plane? Train? All of them can get you to Zhangjiajie. Zhangjiajie is very famous now, and basically every place has routes to Zhangjiajie.
Preparation before departure
1. Get an overview of the destination;
2. Gear: the less luggage the better, the lighter the better;
3. Bring a little fruit or snacks, and bottled drinking water;
4. A kind reminder: bring your ID card.
Besides enjoying the magical natural scenery here, most tourists come to Zhangjiajie to seek pleasure and relaxation.
But inevitably you'll encounter different people and situations — good and bad, beautiful and ugly, kind and evil. Being cheated or ripped off is the last thing anyone wants to see. Although the market is constantly being regulated and efforts to crack down on illegal businesses are continuously strengthened, some lawbreakers, for profit, pass off inferior goods as good and mix fake with genuine, leaving people who aren't mentally prepared unable to guard against it and falling victim.
Mentioning these things is not meant to scare people away from Zhangjiajie. Overall, Zhangjiajie's tourism market is still well-regulated. As long as you pay a little attention, book in advance with a legitimate travel agency, ignore things when they happen, stand firm, don't seek small gains, and keep yourself clean, these problems can be completely avoided. Here are the common situations that need attention:
On the train and at the train station:
Taking the train to Zhangjiajie is one of the common and affordable transportation choices for many tourists. The crowd on the train is complex and the flow is large, so problems are most likely to occur there. Let's not even talk about petty theft here — if you're a tourist, some illegal touts will spot you as a “fat piece of meat” early on. As soon as the train enters a city near Zhangjiajie (such as Changde, Shimen, Cili, Jishou, etc.), they'll spring into action, claiming to be reception staff from ××× travel agency or ××× hotel. Some even wear railway uniforms and put on peaked caps (note: mostly to confuse tourists — think carefully, would real train staff really solicit customers for travel agencies and hotels? Whether it's true or false, you'll figure it out with a little thought). They'll strike up a conversation with you and hand out price lists for various tour routes, painstakingly doing “reassurance” work for you, urging you to join a tour organized by ×××, saying how good the quality is, how good the reputation is, how good the fame is……. If this group doesn't succeed with you, a second group will come. It's truly a high-difficulty battle, and their “spirit” is truly “admirable.”
In fact, they're not reception staff from any travel agency or hotel at all. They just want to take you (this business) under their wing, and once they succeed, they'll hand you over to a travel agency and collect a commission from it. Some touts, in order to obtain higher profits themselves, won't hand you over to a travel agency and will directly operate as unlicensed guides and operators. If problems arise, you'll have nowhere to complain and will cry without tears.
Their common tricks:
1. Play a long game, use low prices as bait to lure you in, then strike at the right moment.
Premise: your stance is temporarily firm and you haven't compromised with them yet!
If they didn't achieve any “results” on the train, and you get off the train and reach the station square, those touts — if they think there's still hope of profit from you — generally won't let go just like that. There's still trick number two! What is it? That is, sending someone to follow you. Wherever you go, they follow (note: we often hear scattered tourists confide in us like this: “At the train station I felt like they were going to tear me apart...”; “Tell me, do we look like we're doing underground work?...”; “Sigh! It wasn't easy to finally escape!...”. There were once two Hong Kong guests who, after getting off the train, couldn't stand the pestering and immediately bought tickets to return, and later reported it). If you stay at a hotel, they'll follow you to the hotel. After you've checked in, they'll demand a commission from the hotel, insisting these guests were introduced by them.
If at this point you think their guide service fee is too high, they'll lower it again and again, until even you can't believe it — such a cheap “bargain”? In fact, the guides they provide are mostly unlicensed guides with no real ability to explain the sights, but they're really good at taking kickbacks from you, cheating you, and ripping you off during your trip. To be honest, a guide like that is worse than no guide at all.
2. Exploit loopholes in tour routes, use low-cost expenses and poor-quality service to obtain high profits.
Premise: your stance has been compromised and you've been won over by them!
Many tourists, because they don't understand the local tourism situation well enough, don't consider things carefully enough. On the train, when discussing a package tour with those scattered touts, as long as it looks like a Zhangjiajie several-day tour itinerary, densely packed with attractions and at a particularly affordable price, they'll accept it without much consideration. Actually, this is wrong. You must first understand the following two facts:
1. Zhangjiajie tour routes are roughly as follows: the highlight attractions include Yellow Dragon Cave, Baofeng Lake, Tianzi Mountain, and Zhangjiajie; the non-highlight attractions include Back Garden, Yuanjiajie, Yangjiajie, Jiutian Cave, and so on.
2. The main accommodation areas are distributed in three major regions: Wulingyuan District (Suoxiyu), the exit of the Forest Park, and Zhangjiajie city.
But in order to reduce costs and thereby obtain high profits, they usually change the conventional route and accommodation areas:
① Reduce the attractions on the highlight tour routes (especially attractions that require tickets), and add less important attractions (which don't need tickets anyway or have low ticket prices — the more they list, the more you'll feel you've gotten a bargain).
② Change the area of the hotel where you should stay, placing tourists in remote family inns in Yangjiajie, Yuanjiajie, the top of Tianzi Mountain, and other remote areas with poor conditions and service, making the promised star-rated hotel or guesthouse an empty phrase — or they simply wouldn't dare promise it. When tourists question why it doesn't meet their expected standard, they change their tune and say this place only has this standard. In that desolate mountain area, who can you explain things to? This way they cheat you without room for discussion.
2. In the hotel accommodation area:
Being ripped off or cheated in the hotel area where you stay is completely different in nature from what happens on the train and after getting off the train. The targets are no longer any tourist, but mostly male tourists.
Check online for evaluations of Zhangjiajie people — it's truly embarrassing. I don't know what the government management departments are doing. Such a large tourism industry isn't being developed well, and everyone who's been there leaves cursing, swearing they'll never go to that rip-off place again. The people of Zhangjiajie are so out of tune with the scenery of Zhangjiajie! Has anyone ever seen a tour guide at any tourist spot who curses tourists if they don't go with him to attractions that cost extra? The shopping stop we went to on the first day was a knife shop. When we all showed that we'd seen this kind of sales tactic before, the vendor immediately shooed us out with a very nasty attitude. Tourists, in order to help the guide's business, even have to cooperate by putting on a show at shopping stops. We've seen that trick tens of thousands of times, and they don't even allow tourists to show impatience. If the vendor sees that the tourists know the market, the vendor won't sign the commission slip for the guide. If the guide doesn't get money, he won't let the tourists off — he'll drag us to another shopping stop until he gets his slip signed, and only then will he let us go back to the hotel; otherwise, don't even think about going back. Every shopping stop uses the same sales tactic. If our group is from Chongqing, they find a Chongqing person to play the boss at the sales stop. If our group is from Guangdong, they find a Guangdong person to play the boss of that stop. The purpose is to use the trick of fellow townspeople cheating fellow townspeople to win everyone's trust and make them buy more. It's so shameless. Fortunately, our group was all very rational and didn't get cheated out of a single cent! Even for foot massage — at first the price was agreed at 30 RMB for one hour. Halfway through, the massage lady wanted us to try their medicinal liquor. Before the trial, she pinched the flesh on my leg so hard it hurt like hell. After the trial, her hands and feet became very gentle, and she said it was the effect of the medicinal liquor (as if we couldn't feel the difference in pressure?). She insisted we add 10 RMB for her. Several of my colleagues only threw 10 RMB to those massage ladies because they couldn't stand the pain; otherwise they'd pinch you hard. The sedan chair ride was even more comical — it was agreed at 80 RMB for the whole trip, but when we arrived at the destination, the chair bearers said it was 80 RMB per bearer, so we had to pay 160. We had no choice but to accept being ripped off. Some people who knew the market told us that actually only 100 RMB was needed for the whole trip. Zhangjiajie really left me with a very, very bad impression. I don't want to use vulgar words to describe it here. I just want to ask the locals of Zhangjiajie: if you went elsewhere with an enthusiastic heart to travel and received such treatment, what would you think? We're all Chinese. Cheating your own people is one thing, but when foreign friends come to our place and get this kind of impression too, what's damaged is the image of us Chinese people. I sincerely hope the relevant departments and responsible leaders in Zhangjiajie will truly pay attention, and not just focus on their own positions, their own money, and their own mistresses. Please, for the sake of Zhangjiajie people not being cursed by the whole country, for the sake of people across the country not being ripped off at will, and for the sake of our Chinese image, do something practical!
There are too many things to pay attention to.
Zhangjiajie travel during May Day — beware of catching a cold. I suggest you bring a sweater or a jacket. Whether the weather is cold or hot, you must bring it, because May 1 is the golden week for Zhangjiajie tourism, so there will definitely be a lot of people, and food, accommodation, and transportation will all be relatively more expensive.
It's estimated to be very hot by then, but entering the Forest Park will definitely be very cool. LZ, just bring an extra jacket. But you won't get too cold while climbing, though at night the humidity is relatively higher and you may feel a bit cold. If you're not careful, you might catch a cold.
When you get to Zhangjiajie, of course you have to eat the specialty foods, such as country cured meat, sausage, and ciba. The guide will definitely take you shopping and such. In short, be extra careful, and many things can be haggled down aggressively.