Travelling should be fun, but for many people who take domestic trips during the 'golden week' holidays, it has become torture. The difficulty in buying rail tickets, congestion at tourist sites, and traffic jams are among the hassles 330 million mainlanders faced as they took off over National Day. Ye Ping , a 25-year-old Beijing bank accountant, planned her trip to Shanghai early. She thought she was smart planning a September 28 departure two days before the start of the holiday week. She was first in the queue on the morning of September 25, when rail tickets for September 28 became available. But the clerk told her tickets were sold out. She tried the next day, but after queuing for two hours she was disappointed again - no tickets to Shanghai or neighbouring cities until October 1. Left with little choice, she turned to scalpers, even though they could charge 100 yuan more than the normal price. They asked Ms Ye to wait. 'I waited and waited. They all failed. They blamed this year's Mid-Autumn Festival being so close to the National Day holidays. Many tickets were reserved for officials or had been booked by travel agencies,' she said. Her last resort was to get up at 6am on September 27 to buy a bus ticket. It took 18 hours for the 1,500km trip and she suffered travel sickness. 'If I knew the golden week holiday meant everything terrible will happen, I would have never have come up with the idea of travelling,' said Ms Ye. But 33-year-old salesman Jiang Zhihong and his wife Zhao Fang did not have any ticketing problems. They joined a tour group in Shanghai and flew to Sichuan on September 30 for a seven-day holiday. Only then did their woes begin. 'We arrived at Chengdu at midnight. I don't know exactly what happened, but it took the tour guide an hour to find another hotel, as she said the one previously booked was somehow fully occupied during golden week,' said Mr Jiang. The next day was no better. 'We were taken to a self-service restaurant. It was full of tourists at midday. The spicy dishes were served in big barrels and basins, which I thought were appropriate only for waste matter.' In an attempt to beat the crowds, the couple hopped off their tour bus as soon as they arrived at the destination and sprinted to the best spot for photographs. 'But in a split second, there would be tourists climbing up trees, stepping into waterfalls or embracing statues, invading your pictures,' he said. Mr Jiang said he was disappointed and very apologetic to his wife, as the trip was intended as a belated honeymoon. 'I tried to make up for our missed honeymoon by taking this trip. How terrible it turned out be,' he said. But for Wang Yin , 33, her problems started before she could leave Beijing. She drove to Tianjin and Shanxi with her husband. 'It usually takes 15 minutes from my apartment to the highway entrance. We were choked in the smog and seeing an endless line of cars queuing up, I got so fretful,' said Ms Wang. Her return home was just as bad. 'On Wednesday when I was driving back, the air had already started turning bad because of the vehicles coming into the city.' To ease the stress of 'golden week' travel, China's National Administration of Tourism has issued a list of 20 bad habits people should refrain from, including talking loudly in public places, jumping queues and spitting. Tourism academics have suggested replacing the 'golden week' holiday with a system that is more time flexible. Consumer spending for the National Day 'golden week' holiday was estimated to top 300 billion yuan, a 14.5 per cent jump from the same period last year, the Ministry of Commerce said.
