Kirby's Feedback on 9-Day China Tour

We were especially happy with Gerry, our guide in Beijing. He was incredibly knowledgeable and his English was excellent. We had a lot of fun discussing cultural things with him.

Ruby,

We are more than happy to provide feedback. Overall, we had an absolutely wonderful experience. We were especially happy with Gerry, our guide in Beijing. He was incredibly knowledgeable and his English was excellent. We had a lot of fun discussing cultural things with him. He was there to pick us up from the airport on time and the car and driver were also excellent. We really couldn't have asked for a better guide. He brought champagne and cake up to the Great Wall so we could enjoy them on the Wall itself, he took us to very authentic restaurants for lunch, and we arrived early to every appointment we had. Jerri absolutely understood exactly what we wanted from this vacation and his professionalism showed. Absolutely a top-notch guide, I simply cannot describe how happy we were with him and his efforts.

Our guide in Xian, Sarah, was also good. She picked us up from the train station on time. The car was in average condition, but the driver was very friendly. Sarah spoke very good English and was engaged, so we talked to her about wedding etiquette in each country, which was a lot of fun and very interesting. She was knowledgeable about the tourist attractions and had a lot of energy and excitement for her job. She didn't always take us to authentic restaurants, but I think part of that was because of the locations we were in. She also recommended a very good restaurant for dinner, but they did not take American Express like she said they would, which caused a bit of a problem, and she also did not program the correct phone number for her into our phone, so we couldn't contact her for help. Otherwise, we were happy with her and thought she was a very good guide.

Snow was our guide in Shanghai, and I think she did an acceptable job. She wasn't as knowledgeable as the other guides and she didn't speak as good of English as the other guides, but she was very accommodating to our schedule. She had a couple of big strikes in our eyes, first, she had us leave too late for the ERA show, so we arrived late. Traffic was very bad that evening, but she should have worked that time into the schedule because we left around rush hour and we weren't doing anything that evening that would have kept us from leaving earlier. She also helped us order lunch at one restaurant, but didn't inform us that we went over our budget for that meal, making us skimp at the next restaurant to stay in the overall budget. Since the budgets vary for each meal, I think she should have informed us of the budget because I don't think we should have to spend our trip looking over the itinerary to determine budgets at every stop. Our other guides did not run into this problem, because I think our other guides took us to more authentic, inexpensive restaurants. Snow generally took us to either more expensive restaurants that didn't seem like the type of place normal Shanghai residents would go, or took us to very touristy-type places. I don't think Snow understood what we were trying to do with this trip, but overall she was fine, just not up to the standards of the other two guides.

We were very happy with the experience and the very high level of communication between ourselves and the guides. All of the drivers were extremely friendly, and the cars in Beijing and Shanghai were very nice, as well. There's no doubt in my mind that I would plan another trip with China Highlights without hesitation.

Thanks for all you did to make our honeymoon a once in a lifetime experience!

Kirby and Erica Smith