'Mode': TO,AROUND
Category: Car/Motor Home
Getting TO/AROUND: Taxi is one of the most easily accessible public transport in Beijing. It is fairly cheap compare to any other metropolitans. All taxis in Beijing are charging based on the reading on the meter. When you begin a journey, the meter will automatically reads 10RMB which is approximately US$1.25. There are 3 types of taxi in Beijing with different ratings based on the size of the car. They are of 1.20, 1.60 and 2.00 per km ratings.Moving around is easy by hopping to any of the 25,000 red taxis on the road.
Always carry a card from the hotel in the event you get lost in the city. Shown the car to the driver and ask him to bring you there. Most of the drivers are not able to speak in English with exception of a few that was specially trained lately for the games. A hotel card in Chinese will be very helpful.
Taxi ride from the airport to central of the city using a standard Citroen taxi will range around RMB 80 to RMB 100. In the past, I have heard of many visitors were conned into paying as much as US$300 to get into the city from the airport. This should not happened any more as strict rules applied on drivers found cheating will be prosecuted with long term banned. As most taxi drivers have to queue in line for hours to get a passenger from the airport, a small tips of RMB10 or RMB20 will make the day of any of these drivers especially if your journey is a short one (around Lido Hotel area).
You can also chartered a taxi/private own car for day trips to the Great Wall (which is around 40 to 1.5 hour drive from city) or just to move you around various locations like Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, Pan Jia Yuan, Wang Fu Jing, etc. As long as it is within the city, most drivers are more than willing to let you charter their car for the day.
A typical 2 litre care (Passat, Bora, Hong Qi) will cost around RMB450 to RMB600 for an 8-hour day rental with chauffer. Each car can seat 4 comfortably. If you are sharing among 4, that is less than US$15 for a day.
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on Apr 19, 2004
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