Buying rail tickets online

Hi All,
I'm looking at booking all our train tickets online through either Ctrip or Travel China Guide. Have any of you used their services and which one would you recommend or should I buy them all at one go when I get to Shanghai on 6th July. Travel dates are 14th July - 3 August. There are 8 trips to be bought.

The service charge on each ticket is $5 and delivery is an $5 per item.

Thank you kindly for replying

As to which to use, that's a matter of taste. Some people like the do-it-yourself online approach of ctrip, others like to work through an agent.

As to whether to wait till you get to China, that depends on the tickets. Overnight sleepers certainly buy ASAP, but others just maybe.

As 889 says, it really depends on what tickets you are buying and how crucial to your plan there are.

You can usually take a slower/less ideal train or rough it on a bus or pay extra on the high speed rail if things sell out.
I seem to remember you being cost conscious from a previous post, but dont remember if you wanted the cheapest

Hard seat trains or to make use of hard sleepers overnight. Hard sleepers sell out and they tend to be few in number. The cost difference between the ideal sleeper berth from A to B and getting HSR or the bus from A to B during the day and a hotel room is huge, so booking in advance is worth $5-10 easily.

If you are planning on taking the HSR during the day, it is less likely to sell out and your options if it does sell out are to take another HSR at a different time or the bus which takes longer, maybe that isnt worth paying extra to book in advance.

Buying tickets in person in China is a pain, even if you speak Chinese, so it might be worth it anyway to book in advance through an agent/website.

Don't pay extra for delivery. You can get confirmation number and pick them up yourself at the train station. Simple and no mandarin needed. See in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ridPOZKd-M8

We're working with china-diy-travel.com - really professional - quick response- you only pay after they buy the tickets (though as we didn't want to pay 8 invoices we are making 2 payments) . I had been watching the trains/tickets I wanted and noticed that they are all showing sold-out within a day of going on sale (that includes hard sleepers/seats ) with only a few tickets left at inconvenient trains. These are traains heading from Xian out to Kashi . We are paying $5 / ticket and will collect the tickets when we arrive in China

I usually resist doing anything as organised as booking a month of trains in advance but China convinced me otherwise - I really didn't want to have to do sleeper buses or fly

Thank you everybody for your recommendations. Finally I decided to book with Travel China Guide. I was able to book all my train trips and pay the delivery charge just once! which is fantastic.

Hi,

Were the tickets delivered to your home? How far in advance did you book them and how long did they take to come?

Sorry for all the questions, just good to know the answers before I book with Travel China Guide. I am nervous of getting it wrong.

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