Beware the travel insurance provided with credit cards. I was forced to lodge a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman against a bank’s insurer for unconscionable and deliberate processing delays after four months.

After lodging with the FSO, I received a notice from the insurer advising that it intended to pay.  Never forget the FSO is there when your insurers are not.

TIP OF THE WEEK

My husband and I recently travelled through China by train with our trip booked through a Beijing-based company called china-diy-travel.com and could not recommend it highly enough.

It supplies translations of departing stations for your taxi, what you require, and even further translations to assist if luggage is lost, if you miss the train or need to book a later train.

This is a great help as there is little English around stations or on trains. At its suggestion we bought two children’s tickets for our sleeper (four-berth with a door) which meant that we had room for our bags and space to move. It also meant that the door remain closed all night with no one else coming and going.

We were advised by china-diy not to use the dedicated windows at stations which “are automatic distributions for Chinese citizens who can get tickets using their national ID cards”. The e-ticket provided by china-diy should be presented at any ticket window (which always has a queue) with the passports of those travelling (children travel on parents’ passports so we had no problem with our phantom children).

Tickets for the train are then issued, you find the correct waiting room and wait for the train to arrive. You are then swept along with the dozens of Chinese also on that train. Everyone takes their noodle cups and uses the hot water available at the end of the carriage to make dinner. We took ours from Sydney but there are plenty available in the many small supermarkets around the cities.

See full story at www.traveller.com.au