Dear Maggie,

First of all, let me say that the whole trip was a wonderful experience and certainally excellent value for money.

The guides overall were very knowledgeable and did generally go out of their way to help my traveling companion who had some mobility problems. David in Beijing and Jessie in Guilin stand out as exceptional. They were personalble and seemed really to care about us. My friend was going to forgo the walk to the Great Wall, but David came back and personally escorted her at a slow pace so she would not miss this once in a lifetime opportunity. Service above and beyond the call of duty!

Meals were all excellent! Even the one on the Li River cruise boat which was suppored to be not up to standard. The guides asked us for any special requests (there were 9 vegetarians in our group) and ordered a wide variety of dishes that everyone enjoyed. The ala carte dinner was confusing and we ended up with far too much food, some of which wasn't what we had thought it was on the menu. Just having the guide order would have been better.

The hotels were first-rate and the drivers and buses were excellent.

Lotte Vajda

  Hello Cecily,

The Dumbling banquet in Xian and the Peking Duck Dinner were absolutely delicious and to be recommended!!! All the food was wonderful and a big variety was offered.

One problem though: the meals served (lunch and dinner) were much too big and unfortunately most of the time we could only eat less than half of the portions served. This was a real waste of delicious food!

Maybe the portions could be a bit smaller and that would reduce the cost of the meals and therefore the overall cost of the trip. Or cut down on the portions and add some wine more often (wine was only offered/included at 2 dinners!)

The guides were a pleasure to be with. Their English was quite good and easy to understand. Our guide 'Maggie' in Beijing was very friendly, helpful and knowledgable.

The guide in Shanghai 'QinQin' was fun to be with.

The guide in Xian 'Julia' was willing to change plans and tried to accomodate our requests and was extremely helpful.

All in all we absolutely enjoyed this trip and I was positively surprised at how well everything was organised.

The Acrobatic show was very interesting and extremely exciting and good.

The Great Wall was a memorable experience though we would have liked to spend more time there (90mins was a bit too short)

I would suggest for future trips that the guides give their customers the option to have a break during the day to go back to the hotel and change before the Peking Opera, Acrobatic show or the Chinese Music and Dance show or just to have a rest in the hotel during the day as the itinerary can be quite exhausting at times. This option was not offered by any of our guides and on some of the days a rest during the day would have been appreciated by us.

But again, overall the whole trip was the experience of a lifetime and we will recommend your website to our friends.

Thanks for everything and God bless you all!

catherine