Getting to Chengdu from Shanghai
yangmei91
August 16, 2012, 11:29 AM posted in General DiscussionHi everyone,
I hope you can help me out with a travel-related issue: I've planned to visit a friend in Chengdu for a few years. I thought there'd be a 10h train connection, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The only connections I could find are 28h-38h ones which does not exactly fit my travel plans. I heard that plane tickets are not much more expensive than train ticket, but at 500$ (round-trip), I'm not so sure about that either.
Am I looking in the wrong places? Do you have any suggestions for me?
yangmei91
August 16, 2012, 12:22 PMThanks...The odd thing is, I can't find any plane tickets for 1000CNY, the cheapest one is 1800. I definitely wouldn't choose soft sleeper, anyway, even for such a long trip.
What a disappointment...
bodawei
ticket9588.com - you have to use either IE or Google Chrome to pay, you can pay with foreign credit cards. You can get tickets discounted up to 70% off if you're lucky. You should get 50% off okay booking a week or two ahead, as long as it is not during a holiday period.
Generally discounted economy fares work out about the same to sleepers on the train.
You can also try flying to Chongqing if they are cheaper, and then about 200 rmb for the bullet train to Chengdu, takes 2 hours. But you need to take into account cost and time of transfers between airports and train stations.
yangmei91
Thank you! That link was quite helpful, and I think I will take up your suggestion and travel via Chongqing.
root
Hmm Chongqing, haven't thought about that...
I have to make the same trip in late October, and I have been checking on qunar.com and ctrip, both of them still seem to have reasonable prices for my dates. What dates are you planning to travel that you only see 1800CNY fares??
yangmei91
I entered dates between August 24 and September 01...
root
http://flight.qunar.com/site/oneway_list.htm?searchDepartureAirport=上海&searchArrivalAirport=成都&searchDepartureTime=2012-08-24&searchArrivalTime=2012-08-27&nextNDays=0&startSearch=true&from=fi_ont_search
For 8/24 I see 10 tickets under 1000, which sounds pretty reasonable to me...
root
August 16, 2012, 11:56 AMnope, i think your findings are correct, there doesn't seem to be a faster train as of right now.
and yea, soft sleeper would run you about 800CNY each way, while an airfare about 1000, so not that big of a difference. Should definitely fit in under USD 500...