Hi Bob. Many thanks for the information. Can't wait until it's my turn in March!. I had one particular question and was wondering if you could help me. The panda research centre visit - I realise it's only a short half day trip but I have been told that there is the opportunity to spend more individualised time with the pandas if you pay extra. ( somewhere in the region of £200 I believe). Did anyone in your tour group do this? [/size][/font]
Hi I'm just back from this great tour and thought I'd share some of my experiences with you all! There have been a number of great reviews of the China tour (including the superb blog from Alan aka Gooner 67) so I'll try not to duplicate too much what they have said already. This was a busy tour, as indicated in advance, but it was not excessively so - only a little more hectic than other long haul tours such as Vietnam and I feel it was excellent value for money. However, it certainly was not suitable for anyone with limited mobility - there were lots of steps and uneven surfaces and some days involved a lot of walking (the day we visited the Forbidden City in Beijing we walked more than four miles!).
The highlights were, of course, the Great Wall outside Beijing, the Terracotta Warriors at Xi'an, the panda reserve at Chengdu and the famous Shanghai skyline. However, we saw and did so much more than this - for me just as interesting and enjoyable was witnessing the Saturday morning activities at the Temple of Heaven, where the locals took part in Tai Chi, games of dominoes, crochet, badminton and dancing; while the Tang Dynasty show and Shanghai acrobats were amazing and real holiday highlights. The face changing show at Chengdu was not part of the itinerary, but Bobby our local guide offered to organise it for us and to be honest, it was not that great - the actual face changing act was well done, but it only comprised five minutes at the end of a rather tedious evening! We also experienced a wide variety of activities including a calligraphy lesson and some dumpling making! So all in all the programme was extremely interesting and we learnt so much about life in China, past and present from the very informative local guides.
The food was western buffet style at breakfast and a range of local dishes at lunch and dinner, typically ten or twelve dishes served on a lazy susan for us all to share. Dishes consisted of some that were familiar from any Chinese restaurant at home and some that were not! There were a number of vegetable dishes served at every meal and usually a couple of those served were spicy, with the food in Chengdu (Sichuan Province) being the spiciest. I personally preferred the food in Shanghai for flavour and variety. All the hotels were very good, with the ones in Beijing and Shanghai being the best. Wi-fi was was available at them all, with it being free in the foyer in Shanghai but only at a cost in the rooms there. All the hotels except Chengdu had western or international style sockets - so if you need to charge phones etc daily I'd recommend you get some Chinese adaptors from Amazon.
We had a small group of fifteen - four of whom continued on to do the Yangtze Gorge add-on. It was the youngest JY group I've ever experienced, with over a third of the group being in their 30s or 40s. I travelled with a friend of mine, Trish, and there were two other friends travelling together but everyone mixed extremely well and there were no cliques. Branwen Edwards, our tour manager, was exceptional - always kind, considerate, helpful and very well organised. She helped to make this tour really special and went out of her way to ensure that everyone was enjoying themselves. Our four local guides were all good, with Allan in Beijing being the best.
The itinerary was well thought out and, in my opinion, just the right amount of time was allocated to each place of interest. The only suggestion I would make is that the day trip to Leshan and the giant buddha while at Chengdu was a little underwhelming, so perhaps the folks at JY might consider cutting this excursion and giving more time to the panda centre instead. If this were done, the flight to Shanghai could be in the morning rather than the afternoon, allowing the possibility of a day trip into the surrounding countryside (two of our group did this the last day in Shanghai and had a very enjoyable day - almost resulting in missing the flight home, but that's another story!!).
If any prospective travellers have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. In the meantime, I'm going to sort out my washing and all the photos I took. Memories of this excellent tour will live long in my memory.
Best wishes,
Bob
