Fantastic China Highlight Tour from India

Client: Mr.Pradeep Kumar

Nationality: India

Group Code: TCT-RW-FIT-180310

Pax: 4

Itinerary: Beijing-Xian-Chengdu-Guilin-Hangzhou-Suzhou-Shanghai

Dear Rebecca,

First of all I would like to put on record our appreciation for an excellent itinerary that you put together for our china tour. The travel arrangement, hotel accommodation and a taste of best of china in the given time could not have been made better. We are very grateful to you and your team for making this trip a memorable one for us and I would have no hesitation to recommend your services to our friends and family. We thoroughly enjoyed the sightseeing, High speed train and excellent vegetarian lunches at most places, thanks to your organisation and very knowledgeable and helpful guides. Special mention to Guide Clarke in Chengdu. He deserves a round of applause for his excellent English, knowledge and most of all very helpful attitude to make his guests enjoy the trip. He obviously had a lot of pride in his work.

I would however point out some excellent services and some not so good examples which could have made this tour even better.

1. Beijing.
Great itinerary. Excellent and helpful guide. Good food despite being vegetarians. Some more time at the Summer palace could have been preferred.

2. Xian.
Well planned itinerary. Not very hurried. Accommodation and guide were good. She even arranged an Indian vegetarian lunch for us.
Hotel was at very good location though the air-conditioning was still on heating making the room rather uncomfortable.

3. Chengdu.
One of the best experiences. The guide Clarke is a gem. Very helpful and went out of the way to make our tour extremely enjoyable. Good English, enthusiastic and helpful. Please convey our sincere thanks to him. Highlights of the trip was off course a great visit to the panda research centre.
Sofitel hotel Upgraded to a suite which was a bonus.

4. Guilin.
The highlight was meeting you and we are very grateful for an excellent gift you brought for us.

I would however mention that the trip was rather unsatisfactory solely due to the attitude of the guide at Guilin and in our opinion you may seriously wish to consider finding some-one other than Helen. She had her own itinerary and did not bother to follow the plan outlined in our tour program. I understand some changes were needed due to change in flight time.

On day 1 the visit to Reed flute caves was very good. She suggested we go the elephant trunk hill on our way back from Yangshuo but on our insistence she did that on the same day. She did not however take us to Silver and Gold twin pagodas which we only saw from the boat during optional excursion at night.

We also were not offered the walk from prince city as outlined in the itinerary. As there was no time for lunch, she did offer us 50 RMB each towards that to use it for our dinner and she did take us to a nice Indian restaurant. She was good when she wanted to but we would have preferred her to stick to the itinerary or at least give us a choice if she thought she had better ideas.

Next day Lee river cruise, Packed lunch was “ham” sandwich despite telling her very clearly that we are vegetarians. She was hardly guiding us on the cruise and was more in conversation with other guides, we had to repeatedly ask her about the landmarks. 3.30 PM we were taken back to bus stop to take a shuttle to the hotel in Yangshuo. The hotel was beautiful and had excellent service.

Next day we were not offered a tour of the ten mile gallery as she said we are already staying in the most beautiful part of the area. On way back to Guilin airport no Lunch was offered as she assumed that we had late breakfast and packed one apple, one cereal bar and Chicken (so much for vegetarians) straws each. No water even. This was very disappointing.

5. Hangzhou, Suzhou and Shanghai: Excellent tour, itinerary and guides. Could not have been better.
Please convey our sincere thanks to whole of your team.
Some of my comments may sound harsh, but are written in good faith and not in any way criticism. You guys did a very commendable job and we are very grateful to you.

Thanking You

Sincerely

Pradeep

On Behalf of Myself, My wife Nita, Pramod and Preeti Agarwal.
 

 

Feedback on TripAdvisor:

Private tour, taste of China.
Beijing-Xian-Chengdu-Guilin-Hangzhou-Shanghai 

The travel arrangement, hotel accommodation in the given time of about two weeks could not have been made better. We thoroughly enjoyed the accommodation, travel arrangements, sightseeing, High speed train and excellent vegetarian lunches at most places, thanks to excellent organisation by Rebecca at topchinatravel.com and very knowledgeable and helpful guides. Special mention to Guide Clarke in Chengdu. He deserves a round of applause for his excellent English, knowledge and most of all very helpful attitude to make his guests enjoy the trip. He obviously had a lot of pride in his work.