Worth a trip, but careful of getting gouged

Joined: Jan 12, 2006
Posts: 178
Review of Beidaihe
3

Beidaihe is pleasant enough - the beach areas, crowded as they may be in the summer - are relatively decent (so long as you're not expecting the French Riviera - the water is a bit chilly) and the town in general has a certain distinct charm. Getting to and from there by train is also pretty straightforward.

We went in June and it seemed that the entire town was getting revamped into a Russian-style resort complete with faux-Russian architecture. Pretty much every foreigner there (save for those in our group) was Russian.

One thing to be careful of though is the blatant price gouging you'll encounter in restaurants - it doesn't matter if you are local or foreign - the restaurant owners there are out to make as much money as much possible as quickly as they can (due to the three-month peak holiday season here), so they will try every dirty trick in the book (i.e. overcharging, telling you at the last moment that you ordered the "deluxe" plate, blatant lying about prices etc.) to cheat you on the bill. Be careful and insist on seeing the bill when you pay, and always make a point of asking what prices of the daily catch are before ordering.

For more info, see this blog post.