Dear Ladies.

Finally home safely and in good health after a very satisfying and exciting two weeks in China, thanks to your travel agency and all its staff. We realise that we just skimmed the surface of a vast country with a great cultural heritage, maybe later we will come back for a longer visit in cooler times like April May or September October (but then very busy with long queues) after the completion of all the restoration and building now going on for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai. It was very hot now, but less tourists around, so we could visit/enter all interesting places. THANKS TO ALL OF YOU! The small souvenir we brought you was just a little gesture to show our appreciation for all the efforts you put in helping us plan this fabulous trip.

MEALS: The top set menu's in Beijing were perfect, every time a nice surprise, only lunch on Thursday preceding our special dinner at the Beihai Fangshan restaurant was a little bit less classy than the others; in Xian our guide Mrs. Zhou Ying helped us choose the nice dishes for our meals, and still managed to keep within the budget, only the service in Xian was more provincial and less prefect than in Beijing. The dinner in the famous Central Hotel restaurant was indeed very good, but timing was not so good: had to order easily made dishes in order not to miss the really great acrobatic show at 19hrs30. We are very grateful to our guide Jessie Huang Yuanting from CITS who exerted herself to help us change the menu to less but better dishes by phoning the restaurants in advance and at arrival discussing it with the floor manager at our request, which was not easy for her since she had no idea what the budget was (just had a piece of paper from CITS to pay with, no sum of money specified), and required some extra payment (40 to 90 yuan for the six of us each meal, no big deal but still not as I though we had agreed upon) from our side, but better to have 5 nice dishes we liked than 9 standard tourist menu dishes we did not like so would not eat, as we could see all around us (other tourist groups). We had had far better class restaurants in Beijing, the real top class. We had been warned that this could happen to us unless we specified the top menus, so that is why we booked the trip with you specifying top set menu's, not the run of the mill tourist menu's like we had in Shanghai. You should beware of this problem, in the past some our friends had even left their groups to have a bite a the local MacDonalds for this reason. CITS Shanghai should have done better! All the more appreciation for our guide who did her utmost best.

GUIDES: All were very friendly, helpful, informative, knew a lot about the history the city and its cultural monuments they worked in, spoke good English in their field of work, although sometimes lacking vocabulary for things outside their field (e.g. when discussing what interest to pay the bank on a mortgage on a house).

Our thanks extends especially to Juliet Yu Congyan in Beijing and Jessie Huang Yuanting from the CITS in Shanghai, the last although still quite young had a better grasp of the English language than most others, and was very eager to learn more; they both were very helpful with our special requests, from them we learned a lot about how life in modern China is today. Jessie Huang Yuanting also helped us with our meals.

DRIVERS AND (MINI)VANS: very, very good drivers, the Americans say that if you can drive in New York you can drive anywhere, we would say the same for Amsterdam with is even more difficult to navigate than New York, but the traffic in Beijing and Shanghai is far worse, and they drove calmly but efficiently through it, merging with the traffic, braking before bumps, letting us off and meeting us after a visit to an interesting place or restaurant as nearby as possible, usually on the pavement in front of the building, we never had to wait long for the (mini)van (good communication between the guide and the driver through the ever present and essential cell phone); never angry, never a cross word, truly professionals! Most of them also were also kind and thoughtful as to hand us our bottles of water before setting out on a visit. Good, clean busses, only the one in Suzhou, a rather aged diesel, was noisy, but otherwise all right!

HOTELS:

in all hotels our family of four could, after some discussion through our guide, obtain interconnecting rooms, since we shared 3 suitcases amongst the four of us. Very good!

Crowne Plaza Beijing at the Wanfujin Dajie was excellent, A1 location with everything we needed around us, excellent services. We rather pay more for this location than have a hotel away from this street.

Bell Tower Hotel in Xian also very satisfactory, nice hotel right in the middle of the city.

Bamboo Grove Hotel in Suzhou, supposedly not popular with the tourist, but recommended by a friend who is in the travel business to China and Asia, had a very romantic "classical garden" between its buildings and was not far from the Master of the Nets Gardens, very good choice also, better than the Suzhou Hotel.

Central Hotel in Shanghai also very good, after some discussion with our guide from Suzhou Miss Liz Deng(?) who was most helpful we were given a family room for the four of us including a sitting room and two separate bedrooms, here we had the best breakfasts during our whole trip, the location almost at the middle of the Nanjing Donglu is unsurpassed, very good restaurant.

In short, your travel agency is great at organizing all-in trips tailored to the needs of the clients, especially smaller groups, very attentive to our wishes, you have a great website for orientation before planning a trip to China, with all kinds of information on it; you organizers, guides and drivers are top professionals. Just try to mend the meals problem in Shanghai. You may consider contracting the four hotels we stayed in. By the way, we did not have to pay 90 yuan each on leaving Shanghai airport like you stated on your website, that had been taken care of by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

Thank you again!

Yours, truly,
Sie Liang Hai and family and friends.