Testimonial

Dear Elaine, It was a wonderful trip. We apreciated so much China Highlights contribution. We had special moments in Beijing, specially because of your guide tour Tracy. She's a very special girl and knows a lot about China. We really enjoyed the time we spent with her. Congratulations, she's a very good guide. I don't have the pictures we've taken with her in my computer, but as soon as I get them, it will be my pleasure sendind it to you. Thank you again and we will certainly recommend China Highlights. Best wishes, Silvia

Dear Sunny, Please apologize for not answering earlier but I had to go through all the workload in the office first. Holiday is over - unfortunately! First of all we had a great time in China thanks to your fantastic organisation. We really enjoyed every single minute and will certainly come back to see more of China. Now to answer your questions: The best thing is hard to say-I think the best thing is that we have choosen CHT to arrange our trip. As we are very experienced independent travellers (we were backpackers for many years also in China in 1989) and don't like to be a member of a tour group it was very important to us to get some time for us. We just love to walk in the streets and take part of the daily life wherever in the world we are. One reason why we have choosen CHT is that for each destination you get a new guide. Like that we had the chance to get know different people from different ages and hear different opinions. Talking to our different guides and learning a lot about China was extremely interesting for us. All of our guides were very well educated, very helpfull and we learned a lot about the different destinations. Most of our Guides also tried to show us the utmost they could, e.g. with Mr. Tong in Bejing we visited also one of the Ming Tombs on our own request. Jason let us enjoy the Chinese Tea Ceremony as we had some time left because our plane from the Yellow Mountains to Shanghai left much later than scheduled. We appreciated that very much. The hotels you have choosen were great. We especially loved the Peninsula in Beijing - a great place to be after a long journey - and the Sheraton in Suzhou. We also can very much recommend the Marriott in Sanya for having a couple of wonderful days on the sandy beach. Therefore we were very happy to have CHT as our travel agent. All the shows we had in our programm we terrific and shouldn't be missed. The acrobatic show in Shanghai is absolutely outstanding. There is just one more to add. On our Boattrip from Guilin to Yangshuo we heared from Americans about the light show in Yangshou. Of course we didn't want to miss that one. Our wonderful guide Ralph could make the impossible possible and found some tickets for us even the show was sold out. In Yangshuo we did a one hour rafting on the bamboo raft. That was very relaxing and enjoyable and could be added in the programm for people who are interested in. Another suggestion is the trip to the rice terraces about 2 hours drive from Guilin. Thanks again for helping us to spend such fantastic holidays. Warm regards, Daniela

Sunny Apologies for taking so long to respond to your request for feedback. Responses to you questions are as follows: There are a large number of things which both my wife and I enjoyed about our visit to Beijing and it is had to decide exactly which was best. I have always been quite interested in history and the wealth of historical sites in and around Beijing are what attracted us to visiting Bejing in the first instance. However I think the single thing which I found most interesting about visiting Bejing was the very different culture which we encountered i.e. China is a much different culture to Australia or New Zealand which are comparatively young countries historically speaking and it was this difference in so many aspects of day to day activities ,food, dress, customs, large population density etc which while I was aware of had not really appreciated until we visited. Plus we found Beijing to be a very appealing city with wide streets and plenty of parks and trees creates the impression that this would be a very pleasant city to live in. Crystal almost had me convinced to try eating a scorpion at the night markets however I ran out of courage at the time. Our guide (Crystal) was very helpful and informative and knew a great deal about all the sites which we visited, however I found that at the Forbidden City as this is such a large site I found myself wishing I had a brief map so that I could locate myself within the complex. These may have been available at one of the merchandising places but I never thought to ask at the time. I really enjoyed all the historical sites that we visited especially The Temple of Heaven, The Summer Palace and the Great Wall. I think in hindsight we made a very good decision to take a private tour especially as we had young children and this may have proved difficult in a larger group. Regards Grant Faulkner

Elaine, Let me start off again with how wonderful our trip was. I don't think we could express enough our thanks for helping us put together the trip of a lifetime. I am happy to answer your questions, but let me start off by telling you how happy we were with China Highlights and the entire staff. While we were pleased with our tour guides, Gillian and I wanted to pass on a very special thank you to Alley in Beijing. She was brilliant! This trip was for our 20th anniversary and we could not have had a better experience. Thank you for a wonderful experience and the next time we visit China we will certainly be using China Highlights. Robert and Gillian

Hi Sunny, Thank you for your email. We are rested after our long trip home and enjoying sharing stories from our wonderful trip with family and friends. I have given your name and China Highlights website to a few people that heard me talk about the trip and wanted more information. It was a good idea to give us "homework"—the evaluations at each phase of the tour, so that we could document our reactions while it was fresh in our minds. Our thoughts changed as we gathered experience at each new stop. We tried to rate the different sites honestly on their interest and value to us personally and hope that did not in any way reflect adversely on the wonderful efforts of our gracious tour guides. What follows are our answers to your evaluation questions: The best thing about our trip was how smooth all arrangements went for us. We truly appreciated and admired the efforts made by Sunny, our wonderful tour guides and all the China Highlights/CITS staff to provide us consistent reliability every day on our tour. It is wonderful to be met, not only by a smiling friendly face at each new city, but also by the capable guide and driver that we will be touring with during that stay. This adds a priceless feeling of being welcomed and secure. We also appreciated how hard Sunny worked with us during the planning stages to not only offer suggestions but also to meet our requests and changes. She was very dependable. The tours were well organized. We appreciated being dropped off on one end and picked up at the other after a long walk. There were three special "surprise" tours that we didn't have much prior knowledge of and thoroughly enjoyed—and highly recommend.

1. The wonderful Tanzhe Temple outside Beijing (but do let clients know there is climbing and numerous stairs involved).
2. The exceptional Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan with thousands of exquisite artifacts excavated in 1978 from the tomb of Zeng Hou Yi. We also enjoyed the performance of chime bells, stone chimes and other ancient instruments. The museum is being expanded and is a must see! (Open 8:30am-5pm; Chime performances at 10a and two other times for a separate charge of 30RMB.) They do sell one book in English about the museum collection.
3. In Guangzhou we didn't want to see any more temples or hills, so Lucia took us on a delightful walk after lunch through the legendary Qingping Market with multiple shops of Chinese medicines (including live scorpions!!), spices, fish, pets, and flowers. We also walked on to Shamian Island along the Pearl River, the colonial area developed in 1843 by the British. The architecture is very European and worth seeing.

Hello Mr. Morgen The trip was wonderful and went very smoothly. Thank you for all your help setting up the details! See my answers below to your questions. I appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback. The best part of the trip was the hiking in Huangshan, especially along the river where it was peaceful and in the areas of the mountains where there were not a lot of tourists. The hike along the river allowed us to see authentic villages that were not filled with tourists. Jason was a great tour guide who knows the area well, and always took the extra effort to make sure our stay was pleasant. Guilin was beautiful. Clive was a great tour guide and was very good at making sure we get free time to ourselves. There were some really good restuarants. We really enjoyed the restuarants where we were allowed to choose our own food, such as McFound's in Guilin, or the restuarant on Tunxi Street in Huangshan where we get to see what we are choosing. Thanks again Mr. Morgen! I will highly recommend China Highlights if anyone I know wants to plan a trip to China. This has been a great experience. Best regards, Melody

Dear Elaine, I wanted to say that I am very grateful to you for making their visit to one of China's greatest cities a genuine highlight of their trip. You (and their tour guide) really lived up to your company name. Best regards Emma

Hello, Sunny, Thank you for your inquiry and follow-up. The requested responses are below in this e-mail. I appreciate your part in making my brief stay in Hong Kong relaxing and enjoyable. The best thing: The welcoming of the guide at the airport, and steering us to the hotel, then later, the brief tour of the city. It was a relief not to have to arrange all those things for ourselves after a long, tiring flight. It gave us a chance to become familiar with our surroundings before branching out on our own. The guides also answered questions and offered suggestions when we told them what we planned to do independently. Even as we were being escorted to the airport as we were departing, the guide was providing information and knowledge that we took with us. China Highlights was very helpful from the first Internet inquiry, through planning and hotel selection, constantly keeping in touch with rapid replies to e-mail. I received friendly and professional service throughout the short tour we requested that covered the highlights, and it was good to have the guide see that we got to the right place at the airport at the right time. Everything I wanted and requested was provided with cheerfulness and efficiency. Beverly

Hi Sunny, Here are some comments: We had a very good experience with China Highlights. My wife and I paid for a deluxe tour, with private guide and driver. Everything went very smoothly. The people in China were polite, and we sensed no bias against foreign tourists. People in crowds and queues can be physically pushy, but they do this to everybody, including other Chinese, so don't take this personally. Very few people speak English, although all of our guides and most of the hotel staff were fluent. The guides and drivers were always on time and courteous, and our accommodations were exactly as expected.? We stayed at the Peninsula Beijing hotel, which was very comfortable (check out the 42 inch plasma TV), and had an excellent breakfast buffet. We saw the usual sites around Beijing,and all of them are worth seeing. We also took a cruise on the Yangtze River from Yichang to Chongqing on the Victoria Katarina. The ship was very nice, and looked to be the best of all the cruise ships we saw on the river. We upgraded to a Shangri-La suite, which I highly recommend if you can afford the premium price -- we paid an extra $300US per night for it. The Katarina has only two of these suites, which are located at the front of the second deck. Each suite is a studio apartment with five large windows, a jacuzzi tub, and (best of all) access to a large private balcony that covers the entire front of the second deck. Since no one rented the other suite, we had this entire balcony to ourselves. Very nice, indeed. All of the shore excursions were well-organized and worth doing. Be sure to see the panda exhibit and Gooseneck Park in Chongqing. Overall, we had a very good experience, and we highly recommend China Highlights for your China tour. Mark Armerding

I think China Highlights have arranged everything very well. Well done! Learning about chinese history, visiting each unique place of interest (I look forward to every single day of the tour while I was there) and the food arranged for us were good and clean. (we did not suffer from any stomach problems, I was impressed). I also enjoyed visits to the silk, jade and coloisse factory. Perhaps, places like Forbidden city and Summer palace, travellers should allocate a day each to those attractions so that they can see more sections and if there is any remaining time, then probably include other city sights so that travellers get the whole picture of Beijing (both historical and modern bits). Travellers should definitely visit the Great wall, Forbidden City, Summer Palace and temple of heaven. I think that beijing has too many things to do and see, if they want a proper visit, they should definitely go for a 5 day or a week tour! Westerners should probably visit the markets in Beijing (it will be an eye-opener for them!). Also, Phototaking, it is best to take it in the morning (maybe arrange all the top attraction visits in the morning).