[Didi] Improve GPS accuracy and Google phone compatibility

Hey. I just came back from a **3,5 weeks trip** from China last week. It was my first time in China, the longest and most expensive vacation I've ever done. And it was absolutely horrible - but that was not China's fault, I was just INSANELY unlucky. **Why it was horrible:** \- I was sick the first week with a sore throat and a cold, so was limited in what I could do. \- Out of 25 days, it was constantly raining (a lot!!!) and even a snowstorm on 22 days (I was constantly wet, had to throw away my shoes as they didn't survive never being completely dry throughout the entire trip and having wet feet when it's quite cold didn't really help recover from my cold ....) - is it ever sunny in China? ..... \- In Jiuzhaigou it was so incredibly crowded - even for Chinese standards - I couldn't see the stairs properly slipped with my foot and injured it so from week 2 I couldn't walk properly ... \- And upon arriving at Shanghai airport (my last stop) I started throwing up the second I arrived at the airport hotel, was out cold for 2 days with a high fever and hotel staff wasn't very helpful in getting me some toast and bananas once the throwing up stopped, I almost starved to death as I couldn't leave the bed and was travelling alone, absolutely miserable ... **Important take away:** A lot of the recent information I found on Reddit was not up-to-date anymore: \- It says you can visit **Tiananmen Square** on the same day of your Forbidden City ticket. This is not true. You need to get a separate reservation at least a day ahead to be able to visit Tiananmen Square, it has nothing to do with your visit to the Forbidden City. Consequently, I couldn't go, unforatunely. \- **Jinshanling Great Wall** section: is supposed to be less touristy. I can't confirm. I went during the week in mid-October and it was pretty crowded and loud there - still quite nice. \- **Crowds:** Yes, there are a lot of crowds, but not where I expected them. Here, I was told that especially **Tianmen Mt.** and **Zhangjiajie National Park** would be insanely crowded, but they weren't, at all...... and it was quite easy to navigate as there were a lot of foreign tourists and a lot of the signs were in English. On the contrary, **Jiuzhaigou National Park** was the worst experience I've ever had in my life in terms of crowds. I should have known already when the highspeed train tickets sold out the second they were released on 12306...... I didn't see any other foreigners when I went there. I was at the park's entrance gate before opening time and yet had to line up with billions of people. It took at least 1h to get in, just to then line up for the shuttle busses. So much squeezing, pushing etc ... this is also when I finally injured my foot ..... The nature there couldn't be enjoyed due to the massive crowds. At each viewpoint you had to line up for 20-30 minutes until you got close enough to even take a photo. Also, getting tickets for a shuttle bus back to the highspeed train station was also utterly difficult and they were booked out quite fast, had to opt for a more expensive option and the driver was an hour late etc. HORRIBLE! I would NOT recommend going there it's NOT worth it - there are similar sceneries in Europe or Canada etc. without entrance fees and crowds .... However, I would recommend going to Huanglong, it's easier, it's not as crowded and it's a truly special sight that you don't get anywhere else (apart from maybe Turkey). **VPN / esim:** I had 2 phones on me. Both Pixel phones. Big mistake. I couldn't get my Pixel phone to connect to any WiFi not even with (**Mullvad**) VPN. I had a Xiaomi tablet with me that could connect to most WiFi with the VPN just fine ... I did try some of the tricks mentioned online for Pixel phones, but Google and China ... it just doesn't work. Also, walking into phone accessory shops, they have so much stuff but NOT for Pixel phones. Just be aware. With the esim I never had any issues. There were 2 times when I didn't have any reception for some time and that was near the Yangshuo Railway Station and between Huanglong Railways Station and Huanglong Scenic Spot. I opted for 50GB for 30 days, but ended up only using about 14GB for 25 days. **Alipay / Wechat:** Mostly it worked for me. For payments I mostly used Alipay and only when it didn't work switched to Wechat. Sometimes when you have to scan something to pay it wouldn't work on either of them ... eventually they gave me something else to scan and then I could pay. **Didi didn't work properly** for me, so I had to take taxis instead on serveral occasions. The GPS within the app was completely off, so sometimes when I needed a pick-up, the pick-up location was so far off that I had to cancel the Didi (which costs a fee) and then had to find a taxi instead. I never figured out why the GPS was so off ... maybe because I have a Google phone? ... but that was extremely annoying especially when you were in a hurry .... I once had to **rent a powerbank** using the mini app in Alipay which is all in Chinese .. it worked, but I didn't know that I had to scan the code again after I had returned the powerbank. I found out hours later, but apparently you can just go to any other Meituan powerband station and scan the code there, luckily ... I just had to pay more because a few hours have passed ... AND I never got my deposit back. I found out that you have to actively demand the deposit back in the app - which I did and then it worked. **Trains and subway:** I saw so many foreigners in front of ticket machines in the metro and never understood why. You can simply activate a metro card for most major cities within Alipay free of charge(!!) and then you just swipe the QR code and it automatically pays the travel fee. It saves so much time, why buy individual tickets and waste time?? It's easy to set up. Just navigate to the "Transport" tab and choose the city and you're good to go. In the beginning you might need some verification process. For trains I mainly used **12306** although I have to admit that I had various issues with the app. First, I couldn't verify any of my e-mail addresses and then when I was already in China not all of my booked tickets were showing up (I had to use the website instead because you need to be able to access those if you want to change anything - which I had to do constantly...). Changing tickets in the app (given that it works) is super easy. Especially, if you just want to take a later train (same destination) you can do that without any additional cost (as long as tickets are not sold out). But you can change a ticket only ONCE. After that you can only cancel it and book a new one - and cancelling comes with a fee, esp. if it's 48-24h prior to your actual trip. Considering how often I changed or cancelled train tickets it would have been waaaaay to expensive to use Trip.com. I would only recommend doing that if you don't have too many train trips or you can't get the 12306 app to work. I found it sad that you cannot choose your seat in the English version. I always ended up in a coach furthest away and usually never got a window seat. As for, how early you should be there, it completely depends, really. I never had to wait long at security check, but for bigger stations it takes some time to get from A to B and then to find your ticket gate, to actually go there and for bigger train stations they often start 20-30 mins prior to departure with the ticket check while for smaller ones, they won't start until 10 mins before departure ... but it's always better to be there too early rather than too late. As a foreigner, you always have to use the "manned" ticket gate and on some ocassions there were SO MANY foreigners that we were about to delay the train as we couldn't all check in on time, so at some point they were just letting all the foreigners through without checking their passports.... ;) ..... **Food:** Well, I can't eat spicy, but have no other food restrictions. I ended up eating meat almost every day. Not always was the meat of good quality.. But most of the dishes were delicious. But I ended up with food poisoning and to this day I don't know what it was because when I started throwing up I hadn't eaten anything for 8h+ .... and I didn't have any street food on that day either.... (and no I didn't drink tab water...) They have some really interesting coffee variations there like with sparkling water, plums inside, mixed with orange juice ... but all of them were interesting and surprisingly delicious. **Language barrier:** Wow, this was huge! Much bigger than expected. I used to live in Japan for many years and worked there as an English teacher and we were always told that China and South Korea are far ahead when it comes to English education. Now, I know this was a lie. Uff ... I was expecting that at least people working in tourism in the big city would have some proficiency in English, but nope. They don't even know "yes" or "no"..... As I was travelling alone, I was so happy when I met other foreigners, not matter from where because naturally they all could speak English - mind you my native language isn't English either .... so it was nice to have a proper conversation without any phone translation. That being said I still had some nice conversations with locals, taxi drivers etc. but it was all via the phone translator which felt a bit weird. :) Being fluent in Japanese, I could understand some of the Chinese characters of course, but in terms of conversations this doesn't help at all. And oh boy, do they hate the Japanese! I saw some food stalls with text like "Japanese are not welcome". Uff ..... But I met a few Japanese tourists and at certain tourist spots they had explanation signs in Korean and Japanese, sometimes even Russian, so .... **Safety:** Female solo traveller. Just like in Japan, I felt absolutely safe in China and I knew it wouldn't be an issue. Crossing streets was probably the most dangerous thing because zebra corssings and red lights won't stop them from overrunning you. Haha .... Also, I felt the air quality was much better than I thought it would be. I probably wouldn't recommend going to China and to AAAAA-ranked spots when you're pregnant because of all the squeezing and pushing it might be a bit dangerous for the unborn child ... I myself got quite a few bruises through that, so .... And I never understood why they're doing it. They were walking super slow the entire time, so obviously they'e not in a hurry, but as soon as it was about to board a shuttle bus (coming every 2 mins), they were pushing and shoving around as if their life depends on it because they couldn't wait for the next bus. **Noise:** There was not much traffic noise because of the many electric cars, but it was still super loud because they honk constantly. Also, I feel that Chinese people have not understood the concept of headphones. In trains or subways, nobody seems to use them, they all just have their phones on max volume while watching videos etc. It's always super loud. And needless to say, that they're speaking very loudly wherever they are, so my ears are still ringing from all the noise. ;) **About the places I've visited:** **Beijing:** (3 days, see above) **Datong: (2 days)** I really liked it there. For me, the Hanging Temple was totally worth the trip. I've never seen anything like it. Datong City was also impressive. All the new skyscrapers and then the old ancient city center within the city walls. I quite liked it, although again it was raining heavily on my second day there, so I couldn't explore much .... the grottoes and the wooden pagoda are also a must-see. I had a private driver for day 1 where I visited the pagoda and the hanging temple and it wasn't super expensive, I think I paid like 500yuan. **Xi'an (2 days).** Apart from the famous army I didn't see anything else because of torrential rain and flooding when I was there. Every other day before and after that - still to this very day was absolutely lovely, sunny and great .... how much bad luck can you actually have? ... I stayed there 2 days and those were the ONLY two days with horrible weather ... **Chengdu Pandas: (1 day)** As I was there on a weekend I decided not to go to the huge base close to the city center, but to the Dujingyuan panda valley which only has around 10 giant pandas. But I'd rather see 10 of them close-up without too many people vs. not being able to see 100+ pandas due to the masses. Pandas were still active and eating at around 10:30, I entered the park shortly after 8:30. The only difference is that in the beginning I almost had the pandas to myself and the later it got, the more crowded it became. And yes, they also have red pandas roaming around freely. :) Also, the Dujingyuan Irrigation System and Ancient Town are very beautiful, you can do that and the panda valley in one day and the waterway is lit up in the evening, so you might want to stay until it gets dark. :) **Leshan Buddha (1 day):** Friends of mine visited just a few days before me and told me as it's dry season the water levels are so low that no tourists boats are running anymore. Due to the constant heavy rain wherever I went, I was at least "lucky" that the water levels were suddenly so high that tourists boats were running again ... I did both, the hike and the boat tour and it was not rushed at all. Unfortunately you couldn't walk down beside the Buddha as the trail was closed off .... **Huanglong and Jiuzhaigou (2 days, see above)** **Fenghuang and Furong (0,5 days each):** I liked both, but if I had to decide on only one I'd personally go with Furong. It's more compact, it's more picturesque and I just liked the waterfall a lot. :) But you can't go wrong with either of them. Didis and taxis were no problem at all, although Reddit tells you a different story... Especially in Furong they're VERY used to foreign tourists! They even hand you a map in English right when you leave the train station. Fool-proof. For either of them half a day is enough. You should stay until the evening when they light up everything, it's quite nice and there are night performances as well. It was a bit hard as it was raining a lot (as everywhere I went...), but still nice .... It was not a problem to leave my luggage at Fenghuang Railway Sta. for a small fee (I think it was 20 yuan), I think it was also possible in Furong. **Zhangjiajie (1 day):** Mt. Tianmen was supposed to be the absolute highlight of this trip (besides the Great Wall). Unfortunately, although I went in the early morning and stayed until sunset, I couldn't see anything. It was so cloudy / foggy the entire day and never cleared up. In fact, it was scary because you couldn't see more than 5m ahead of you. I chose route B and when I arrived at the platform from where you can see the stairs and the heaven's gate, I just heard people's voices, but I didn't know where to go, I tried to find a restaurant or something to sit to wait for it to clear up, but unless you were standing RIGHT in front of it, you couldn't see shit .... I'm so, so disappointed. Consequently, it wasn't crowded at all ... **Zhangjiajie National Park (2 days):** It was not crowded. Yes, of course, there were a lot of people but nothing compared to Jiuzhaigou .... I was there on a Friday and a Saturday. I spent 2 days in the park itself. Not sure if you really need 2 days, because the views become somewhat redundant to be honest. But I didn't have the energy to go to the Grand Canyon due to all the bad luck, the foot injury, the constant rain .... I managed to see Yuanjiajie, Yangjiajie and Mt. Tianzi on day 1 without being rushed at all (plus a few viewpoints that are between Yangjiajie and Mt. Tianzi (get off the bus at the intersection and take a mini shuttlebus to the viewpoints, which costs extra money). On day 2 I explored the Yellow Stone Village (which is nice but REALLY redundant at this point..) and walked along the Golden Whip Stream. This is actually nice because you get a different perspective, walking along the stream looking up to the rocks, so if you have time, that's also nice. There are a lot of monkeys along that trail, be careful. Finally, I walked along the Ten Mile Gallery, but I would say this can be skipped. Again quite redundant. **72 Wonders Building in Zhangjiajie:** This looks amazing, especially when lit-up at night. I wouldn't pay the high entrance fee. Taking photos from the opposite street should be enough, especially if you're short on time. **Guilin / Yangshuo / Xingping (3 days changed to 4 days):** This was supposed to be another highlight of the trip and the relaxing part, but .... again heavy rainfall and it was quite cold. Guilin had 27°C and sunshine on pretty much every day apart from when I was there, when it suddenly dropped to 13°C and due to the heavy rain it felt even colder .... Consequently, I couldn't do or see that much .... **In Guilin (0,5 days)** I went to see the Elephant Trunk Hill (free admission). You can also go up the hill which I recommend because you get some nice views, but when I was there, the "normal" way up was closed, but there was still another way to go up there. The Sun and Moon Pagoda are also nice. You can either just take photos from far away or pay an entrance fee to go up to both pagodas for interensting views and the two pagodas are connected via an underwater tunnel that you walk through, so that's quite cool. The next day I was in **Xingping (1 day)** where I wanted to do a few hikes, but the weather was so horribly bad .. I just took a quick photo of the 20 yuan bill view while my actual 20 yuan bill was dripping wet after only a few seconds ... I took a bamboo tour but that was very unpleasant due to the heavy rain and cold weather .... I assume it's amazing on any other day .... I hiked up Laozhai Mt. but didn't see anything because the weather was so bad. There are signs everywhere telling you it's a super dangerous hike. Nope! I did it in the WORST weather ever with rain covers over my shoes and even then it was not difficult at all (but I'm an avid hiker, so ...) Getting off at Yangshuo Railway Station was one of the very few ocassions when my [Trip.com](http://Trip.com) esim card didn't work, so I had to pay the bus to Xingping with cash. Keep that in mind if you go there. **Yangshuo (1 day changed to 2 days)** was nice. Still, the weather sucked. On my second day there it finally stopped raining and I was able to do a bicycle (not electric bike!) tour. That day, due to lack of information and lost in translation I started first at the G. Bridge cycling along the Ten Mile Gallery to the Moon Hill, but it's not very beautiful there. Then I took a shuttle bus to Jima Pier, from where I started walking - the area there is SO BEAUTIFUL! Luckily, at some point I came along another rental shop and got a bicycle and then rode it all the way to Fuli Bridge (which I also recommend). I spontaneously decided to stay another day, so I had to cancel my super expensive train ticket to Shanghai (or rather postpone it) which did cost mit almost 200yuan .... but instead of going to rainy Shanghai I opted for ONE rain-free day in Yangshuo instead. I then did the TV tower hike which I didn't want to do, but it was better than nothing. Honestly, the view is not that great and if you have the chance, I'd rather do some hikes in Xingping (which I couldn't due to the super bad weather).... and then I took a taxi to Cuping Hill which I HIGHLY recommend. However, it's in an absolutely remote area, so I asked the taxi driver to wait for me, because NO TAXI OR DIDI would come to pick you up there ever .... he then showed me another viewpoint as well. I then decided that I needed to get the lost day in Shanghai back, so I cancelled my train ticket yet again (another 200 yuan byebye) and spontaneously booked a flight for the late evening from Guilin to Shanghai which was absolutely no problem and it was actually cheaper than the highspeed train ticket which was interesting because when I planned my trip the plane tickets were three times the price of a train ticket, but oh well ... I had to pay for overweight luggage because I didn't plan to take the plane and my luggage was already quite heavy at this point ... once I arrived at Shanghai airport I got a Didi to a nearby hotel and then I started throwing up, having the most miserable time yet of the entire trip. The next day, having a high fever, I could not possibly leave the bet, let alone check out and move to the next hotel in the city center of Shanghai ... so half-dead as I was, I had to chat with the hotel I was currently staying at if I could just stay another night in the current room, had to kindly ask to cancel the other hotel, they wanted 80€ cancellation fee .... it was a nightmare ... eventually I didn't even know if I could fly back home in that state .... **Shanghai (4 days, but 2 of them sick in bed)** Eventually, I recovered and had 1,5 days to explore Shanghai. I went to a watertown, went to Suzhou for half a day and checked out the famous skyline of Shanghai. That's about it. Everywhere it was croweded although it was during the week. Absolute madness..... I know this was a loooooot of text, but I hope that this is still helpful for some of you. Feel free to ask me any questions. :)