Hello,

My partner and I are visiting Shanghai in March and plan to travel on to Hong Kong by train. We are looking for some advice on booking our train tickets.

Basically we need to decide whether to book through an agent before leaving the UK or to book upon arrival in Shanghai.

My concern about booking through the China Travel Service (apparently the only agent who can organise this) is that tickets will be delivered to our hotel. What happens if we arrive and the tickets are nowhere to be seen?!

My preferred option would be to purchase the tickets in Shanghai. Can anyone advise, how likely is it that we wil be able to obtain tickets for the 2 berth, soft-sleeper only 3 days in advance? We need to be on a specific train as we have a hotel booked in Hong Kong.

Any advice or experiences of this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

I would book the tickets in shanghai and you will be able to get them. there is a foreigners ticket office in the lobby of the longmen hotel wich is to the left of the main shanghai station if you are facing the front(to the west). otherwise book through an agent. you generally cant book far in advance anyway. CTS will probably take oyur money and then purchase the tickets 3 days before your departure.

I am not postive of the current situation but I belive that the direct train to hong kong mong kok station is the #99 and it only goes every other day, alternating origination points between shanghai and beijing. this could definitely impact your schedule so you might want to check around(I belive there are some web sites wich list the actual departure days. Alternately you can take a train to Shenzhen and walk across the border and onto the hong kong MRT, or take a train to Guangzhou and then 2 hr bus to shenzhen and the border, obviously the direct train is the best option if it is running on the day you want to leave.

I just might also add that unless you really enjoy trains..I do.......an air ticket to shenzhen is much cheaper than a soft sleeper train ticket. The taxi fare from shenzhen airport to the border at lowu is exactly 100 rmb ($12 US) and the hong kong MRT /subway system terminates right at the border crossing.

I was in SH three weeks ago.

SH railway station gave me a shock when I saw so many people gathering outside the station. It was the New Year holiday home visiting time.

I struggled to buy my ticket to Namking. When it come to my turn to buy my ticket, it was all done by computing, quick and efficient.

Wandering around the station to check for the quickest way to get a taxi on my way back from Namking, I found out to the right of the main booking hall about fifty yards away, there was a "soft-seat ticket" booking lounge. There were more than three counter opened, with elegant uniformed staffs, doing business with a smile.. I enquired about the returned journey from Namking for the next day. They checked out that it was quite full. So I bougnt the ticket there. There was only a small service charge. It was a complete different atmosphere from the long queque of fighting-to-get-ticket main ticket hall. The staff did even have the pleasure to answer me questions about the train service to Hong Kong. It took over twenty hours for the journey and it was not that cheap.

I was a Hong Kong Chinese living in London. I have a feeling that one or two of the staffs there speaks a little English. The trains to Nanking are excellent. The comfort and service is one of the best in the world, even better than most of the Japaneses bullet trains, only not as fast. The hourly train from SH to Namking takes slightly over three hours for the whole journey. There are also two services a day that can go as fast as less than two hours.

Nanjing Is the right spelling for the place I called Namking.


sorry