Buying internal flights

Read the fine print with your bank, but ATM's usually convert money at near to the international rate. Some banks are catching on and charging a high service fee or conversion rate. I use to use a bank that had an agreement with a chinese bank, so no ATM fees and the rate was .5% off the midpoint exchange; it was great. But then the bank started levying a 3% fee on all foreign currency translations.

Read the fine print with your bank, but ATM's usually convert money at near to the international rate. Some banks are catching on and charging a high service fee or conversion rate. I use to use a bank that had an agreement with a chinese bank, so no ATM fees and the rate was .5% off the midpoint exchange; it was great. But then the bank started levying a 3% fee on all foreign currency translations.

I went in today and the girl didn't know, online the visa rate looks like 8.394, I don't know if this is what they use. Will call and check tomorrow Yes they do charge fees (something silly like £1 per transaction and 2% transaction fee) but as I say not bothered about that, as can claim back.

Any advice about flights appreciated too :)

You don't need anything printed to get any sort of flight in China. My friend books all my flights and she enters all the details in Chinese (I get a confimation message sent to me in Chinese - which I CAN read - but I don't even have to use that. You just have to hand over your passport to check in at the airport and Robert's xour father's brother). Can't tell you anything about the particular website you mention though (I think my friend, generally, uses Chinese Ctrip).

Actually, I have used the website an hour ago seeing your post and purchased two tickets: Guilin to Chengdu and Chengdu to Xi'an. Honestly I prefer train over plane, but the train journeys between the mentioned cities are far too long and the time is the most valuable part of my entire Chinese trip.

I can confirm that the prices on ChinaTravelDepot are the cheapest I have found so far, even noticeably cheaper than Ctrip website. The process of purchase is pretty straightforward in case that you have a PayPal account (not recommended for credit cards purchases). Time between the payment and receiving the ticket confirmation is up to 5 minutes at most.

Overall great experience. Thank you @cocococo101 for your post :-)!

Thanks Manchurianexile for your reponse!
> I can confirm that the prices on ChinaTravelDepot are the cheapest I have found so far, even noticeably cheaper than Ctrip website. The process of purchase is pretty straightforward in case that you have a PayPal account (not recommended for credit cards purchases). Time between the payment and receiving the ticket confirmation is up to 5 minutes at most.
>
> Overall great experience. Thank you @cocococo101 for your post :-)!

haha no problem, unintentionally helped! One leg they were the same price - Yinchuan -Beijing as Ctrip on 5th April is still expensive ca. 1240 yuan I guess this is due to Qingming festival!? I don't have paypal, so you can't pay by debit card??

Banks don't decide what exchange rate is used on international ATM transactions, the clearinghouse does then your bank takes a markup, 0 to 3% usually. Ask them what their fee is.

I'm not sure about debit cards, but in case that you plan to use credit card, they insist on filling a lengthy form where they also require the copies of both sides of your card (of course, they mentioned that you can cover the first 8 digits on the front of your card and CVV number on the back side). I didn't like that part of story and having a PayPal account I have done my registration and purchases quickly with almost instant confirmation. Good experience and look what a coincidence, you were asking about them and I have never heard about them before. Now we have first hand testimony within couple of hours!

Just to add to manchurian's experience - I've also had a Chinese friend book internal flights for me before, and it's never been a problem. I have no experience trying to book stuff on ctrip.

That's good that you just hand over your passport, don't need to check in online. I ended up booking through ctrip as I like the app (although I booked with Hainan airways according to my unhelpful Chinese friend here) when I think Shenzhen would have been the better option! Price difference for me in the end wasn't much between it and chinatraveldepot