Dear Michael and Lynne,

Sorry for being so slow to give you feedback on the China tour you helped arrange for us last month. Of course we have been busy getting back into our work here in Sri Lanka so not much time to enjoy holiday memories! Here are our comments:

Meals were in general fine, especially the Beijing Duck and pork dishes and the dumplings in Xian. One criticism was that we do not like to be in the kind of restaurant where you are left on your own in a separate room (some Chinese restaurants are like this) - this is very boring, so the best restaurants were always the ones where we were sitting outside or together with other people.

There were no complaints about any of the guides, though some were better than others. Chen Jiali (in Xian) and Lobsang (in Lhasa) were the best - very outstanding guides, and Rebecca (in Guilin) was also very nice. The best was when they were able to take the initiative to adapt the program slightly to be flexible. This is very important, because like many independent tourists, we wanted to see extra things sometimes, or to take more or less time at different places. For example in Lhasa, there was one extra monastery that we wanted to see which was not on the itinerary, and in Xian we wanted to see some examples of peasant art (also not in the plan). So when Lobsang and Jiali were able to accommodate our wishes, this was very nice. On the other hand we were disappointed with the Badaling Great Wall of China - we would have preferred to see a more interesting part of the Wall (such as Simatai where there are less tourists) but Newman was not able to change the schedule to accommodate this, so we were disappointed.

Briefly, here are the highlights and disappointments of each place:

BEIJING: Forbidden City amazing, also the parks and lakes north of the Forbidden City were very nice. However, the Great Wall at Badaling was much too full of tourists -impossible to appreciate. We would have preferred to go to Simatai.

LHASA: wonderful, the highlight of our China trip, I wish we had had more time to spend there. The only problem was the altitude - we were sick for the first 24 hours - you should tell other visitors to bring paracetemol or other pain killer with them when they go, otherwise first night is no sleep!

XIAN: also very fascinating place, much much better than Beijing, we liked it here. National museum, terracotta army, wild goose pagodas, City walls, Juma Mosque all very interesting.

GUILIN: nice place for one night, but YUANSHUO was really amazing, we would have liked to spend a night here and more time instead of having 2 nights in Guilin. Li River tour was very beautiful.

SHANGHAI: a big disappointment, we did not like Shanghai at all. Very little character or history left, all modern buildings and construction, extremely boring. We wish we had not come there and spent more time in the other places instead (Tibet, Xian and Yuanshuo). The Shanghai Acrobats were spectacular, and there were some nice exhibitions at the central Museum and art galleries, but not enough to keep us occupied for three days.

We had 4 drivers in the different locations we were visiting. They were all friendly enough and the car was clean, however the most friendly and helpful of all was the driver in Xian (sorry, can¡¯t remember his name!)

Chen Jiali and Lobsang Tsukphu were both very nice people and excellent guides. They showed real interest in what we wanted to do and in us in general, so we quickly felt we could trust them. It seemed that this was more than just a job for them, they really cared about the places that they were showing us, and also looked after us very carefully. In many ways they were the highlight of our holiday and I would highly recommend them to any other visitors looking for tour guides.

You are welcome to use our feedback details for online testimony, and pictures of our trip can be viewed on http://www.flickr.com/
photos/adrianandivetaouvry

Thank you once again for helping arrange such a wonderful China trip for us.

Adrian and Iveta Ouvry