Thorn Tree travel forum

1

No, you don't need to buy your ticket in person.
Cheers!

2

great, i'll have my friend do it, then. thanks for your reply!

3

No problem, glad to be of help. :)
Cheers!

4

If you friend does have problems......try sending a scanned in copy of your passport photo page and the Chinese visa page to your friend to assist in the ticket's purchase. Some times they ask for traveller documents.

If there is no food, isn't that food for thought?
And if you are bored and want to know more about our Chinese teaching experience, there is our website to read.

5

I don't know if this applies to tickets for the Trans-Siberian... but I went looking for the ticket window dedicated to helping English speakers at the main train station in Beijing. It took quite a while to find it. People at the information desks didn't speak English. I got many conflicting directions. There was also a lot of construction and noise and confrusion outside the station.

Most of the ticket windows are on the outside of the main station. None of them are the right ones. I finally learned that there are indoor ticket windows in the building to the right (when facing the building from the outside) of the main station. Still, the correct booth is, I believe, 106... and strolling through that building I realized that it doesn't exist in that hall either. BUT... in that main hall, if you go halfway and look down a small hallway to the left, you'll see that there is another ticket hall... and window 106. There I found the sullen but effective English-speaking sales person who helped me get tickets.

6

gorski - were you buying international tickets?

OP - it is my understanding that tickets for international trains cannot be purchased by foreigners at the train station but that they must go through CITS or a travel agency. I would love to get confirmation of this one way or the other.

Ruth

First check: Everbrite's travel pages, the New RU sticky,and New RU train sticky

Since I have taken the time to answer your question, it would be nice if you took the time to respond as to whether the information was helpful.

7

nope... I was buying domestic... have no experience with buying international tickets in China

8

gorski - thanks for clarifying that. I have NEVER heard of anyone being able to purchase international tickets in Beijing at the train station and was surprised at what you wrote until I realized that you did not state whether the tickets were domestic or international.

Ruth

First check: Everbrite's travel pages, the New RU sticky,and New RU train sticky

Since I have taken the time to answer your question, it would be nice if you took the time to respond as to whether the information was helpful.

9

sorry if I confused the issue, Ruth. The OP talked about buying the tickets at the train station, so it's good you identified the problem with that.

Given the title of the original post, I'm hoping my comments will be helpful to someone who does a search on buying tickets at Beijingzahn - that window was darn hard to find for a non-Chinese speaker... and, of course, only a non-Chinese speaker would need to find that window! Because it's China!