Ruili sits at the far end of a long road from the rest of Yunnan. The nearest major hub is Mangshi (Luxi), which has an airport with flights to Kunming and several other Chinese cities. From Mangshi, regular buses cover the 100-kilometre journey to Ruili in about two hours. Direct buses from Kunming to Ruili take around eight to ten hours by expressway.
There is no direct train. The slow approach by bus from Kunming (14–16 hours on older road) has been largely replaced by the expressway, which makes the journey more bearable. Travellers coming from Shangrila or the northwest Yunnan tourist circuit face a long detour — Ruili is geographically isolated from that region and is best treated as a separate trip from Kunming rather than as a stop on the Tiger Leaping Gorge–Lijiang–Shangrila circuit.