Having had a few very busy days in Hong Kong we didn’t fancy doing a tour in Xiamen or anything fancy so we just left the ship without doing much organisation to be honest. Getting through immigration took an absolute age so be prepared for a good long wait or leave it a while whilst everyone going on a tour has gone through.
After we eventually got through we went to get on the shuttle but but there was an almighty queue, it seems everyone else on the ship was doing the same as us and just having a light day. What we should have done was pre-pay for the shuttle because if you do that you get on the coach first, lesson learnt I guess.
The shuttle wasn’t expensive but then the journey wasn’t long either, the option of a taxi which were plentiful could have been a better alternative.
The town itself wasn’t that big in Chinese terms and there wasn’t really much to it. You can walk down the main street and take a trip on the boat to the island off the coast but that wasn’t very cheap from what I remember. Its more interesting to walk down the side streets to get a better idea of what live is like than just look at the big shops.
Walking round China makes you realise how much you rely on signs to understand what the shops are selling and what is where. Just seeing Chinese symbols doesn’t help much figuring out what shops are selling most of the time you can figure it out but really at times you can’t.
Xiamen as a place is pretty primitive but certainly more developed compared to the likes of Vietnam, but its still streets behind any town in the UK which are like palaces in comparison. Going on a holiday liek this makes you understand what you have and how good the place is that you live, but seeing completely different places and cultures is a brilliant way to see the world and understand the pressures and challenges that other countries have.
As for things like money well we didn’t spend any but getting some RMB before you get there would be the best bet, the map you get off the ship is good enough to get by with oh and a good scene of direction doesn’t hurt.
Ah! Ignorance is bliss! Xiamen is to my mind the best city in Chinaand I can’t see how anyone could describe it as “primative” . With a little research you would soon have appreciated it. The “little island” that you dismiss so quickly is Gulangyu. It is a unique and amazing place. I have visited it many times and hope to again. You obviously never made it to Xiamen University campus or took a trip round the ring road or visited the Botanical garden or the Horticultural EXPO Gardens and many other places. It sounds like you wasted a trip.
Ignorance, I don’t think so at all. We choose not to tour around in this location. Having come from Hong Kong the previous day and the next destination Shanghai, Xiamen did indeed feel primitive. Going to Xiamen was like going to a small town in comparison and just didn’t have the awe inspiring architecture so prevalent in the other cities that we visited on the trip.
With so many locations and so little time to tour around you have to pick the places that you go to carefully, but there was little to attract me from our brief view of Xiamen that would want me to return in comparison to places like Saigon, Bangkok or Hong Kong.
[...] The first taste of ‘real’ mainland China, Xiamen [...]