Delhi, Beijing or Japan for sightseeing in May with a teenage daughter? [closed]

Delhi, Beijing or Japan for sightseeing in May with a teenage daughter? [closed] - Smiling young ethnic couple walking on city street during date

I will have about 15-20 days in May to travel with my daughter (who will be 14). We are from Brazil and she has never been abroad, so I thought I would like to bring her to some place with unique sights.

I would like that this trip have a semi-backpacking feel (but avoiding cheap shared hostels). However I would like to keep day travelling to a minimum (train sleepers are fine though). Low budget cities are a big plus. Good sights around a major city, attractive to teens (short attention span, likes different stuff, places and museums, but easily bored).

Delhi seems to have some pretty nice culture and sights without much travel around. The route Beijing -> Xian (with some other destination) seems nice, but I'm not sure how travel friendly it is, maybe just staying in Beijing would be enough for two weeks.

I'm torn between Delhi and Beijing. Japan in my daughter's choice, but I think it might be too expensive and everything seems far away. I think the language barrier will be a plus. She will see the need for a second language (and maybe a third) and train a bit of her school English. I think she wants Japan mostly because she is into anime now, apart from that I don't really see her looking into Japanese culture.

Do you have any input on that?



Best Answer

Disclaimer / qualifier: I live in Tokyo

Go to Japan. Any trip from Brazil to Asia is going to cost a lot, you may as well make the most of it.

Japan has no more or less in the tourist / culture / educational areas than China or India. It wins hands-down in the environment category.

  • tap water is drinkable anywhere (probably better than Brazil)
  • public transportation is available everywhere, runs on time, has doors on the trains (sorry India) and is only moderately expensive. The JR pass is excellent value if you take 3 long-haul trips.
  • no air pollution that you will notice (sorry China)
  • hotels are guaranteed to be clean and safe
  • the crime rate (outside of some small and well-known areas) is basically zero. The violent crime rate is zero anywhere you are likely to end up.
  • As a result, your 14yo daughter could wander around Tokyo all day without any concerns from you other than "be back for dinner"

May is a scheduling problem, but if you avoid the first week of May (search for "Golden Week") it will be fine. Hotels are back to normal occupancy (and prices) almost immediately after the holidays end.




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Two Minute Trip BEIJING CHINA // Things to do in Beijing in 2 minutes




More answers regarding delhi, Beijing or Japan for sightseeing in May with a teenage daughter? [closed]

Answer 2

Visiting India?

The two other answers have been rather unwelcoming to India (one of them now deleted), and not just as an Indian, but as someone completely sold into the fact that travelling in India is extremely interesting and fun I would like to answer with a positive bias, strictly speaking I have no knowledge of the other two destinations so I am not competent to compare.

Delhi as a Hub

Your choice is spot on, without much travel (travel less than 500 kms) you have many destinations which can be a treat for a traveller, commutes by Air-conditioned Trains /Cars would make it even better. Agra, Jaipur, Kashmir Valley (though a bit far and if you read this and is convinced about safety) and Delhi itself would be a great experience. As everything around this place would be different, I guess it would keep your teenager engaged and interested in most things here.

Health

Food

One big warning in India, an Australian friend of mine who has travelled multiple times into India clearly identified that eating non-vegetarian food in India can be unsettling, now inferring that the entire country of India is dodgy because you did not understand this fact would be unfortunate, but at times can happen because of your diet habits. I have seen him safely travel through India eating vegetarian food and have no problems at all and have trouble within a couple of hours of eating non-vegetarian, it might just be him, but this is my personal experience. I mention this also because a few friends of mine who have travelled to Brazil and wanted to keep to a vegetarian menu had trouble and so this could be a factor for you.

Water

I believe as a civilisation used to using water in more ways than in the West, seeing water in some place won't make us feel it's unhygienic in itself. We have wet toilets, and cleaning floors with water is the most common method and so it may strike you as a major problem, and yes there are diseases that spread through water and hence you need to be careful, but if you understand the fact that we use water differently from the cultures which probably did not have sufficient water until about 500 years ago, you may be able to navigate your travel better.

Climate

Regarding climate, strictly speaking I Googled up the weather in your place (the location on your profile) and looks like 38 degree centigrade won't be something you have never seen in your life, so 40 or 42 may not be as unfriendly to you as to an average European.

The Language

The language aspect, I would say you will probably never find another destination where there is such diversity in language, while English and Hindi are widely spoken, if you travel enough within India, you will feel the diversity of the languages spoken and that could be deeply enriching for a teenager. While with English you can easily survive, you won't find the entirety of India to be totally English friendly.

Costs

I can be confident here, India would be the cheapest. Travel and accommodation would be very inexpensive here in India, even if you avoid the bottom 40% as being unsafe/undesirable. Fortunately there are enough review sites on the web and TripAdvisor ratings have actually even become an offline evidence in some hotels, just avoid the dodgy agents who would almost always overcharge a foreigner and book on the web after considering the reviews and you should be fine.

There is an interesting angle about poverty, an IT employee in India can get paid about $5 a day and live a comfortable life in many parts of India. Yes, I did not make a mistake about that number; at $10 a day, families live very comfortably here, the fact that you will pay income tax for anything over $11 a day is evidence to this. This is the reason things are cheap here, so the flip-side to low cost will always be local poverty (or seeming poverty).

Culture

Though there are no marked cultural festivals around the time you visit India, you will certainly see a stark difference in the culture here, some of our people still wear traditional clothes and go about their lives so very differently from the western world, I wouldn't be able to compare it to the other destinations here.

Personally if you ask me though, I would agree with JoErNanO,

Since the objective here is to please her, I would let her choose the destination. ;)

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