We are home, back in Canada now.  Thank you for making our trip a wonderful experience filled with many great memories.  It was so well organized and our guides were the best!  The hotels that you booked for us were very good but I would have to say that the Guilin Yi Royal Palace was beyond anything we could have possibly dreamed.  It was simply amazing.  The park setting was so beautiful and relaxing.  I've never known a hotel set in a park like that.  I wished we had a few days just to enjoy the amenities of that hotel alone.  The room we had was so beautiful and incredibly clean.  We got complimentary fresh fruit (apples & apple pears) and cookies each day.  I would have loved a day to lounge around there.  The breakfast buffet was fantastic and delicious.  So thank you again for suggesting that hotel.

 

Christine, our guide in Beijing was excellent.  She was organized, friendly and shared a great deal of information on the culture and history of the places we visited.  She was also very helpful and went beyond just her job as she helped us plan our free day that we spent with my brother's family and his friend's family.  We felt that she really cared about us and wanted us to have a good experience, including our free day in Beijing.  Christine even provided a basket of treats in the car for us.  She said they were local snacks and we enjoyed sampling them.

 

You will probably laugh at some of the pitfalls we encountered doing our own sightseeing on our free day in Beijing.  We took the subway to Tinnamen Square.  After sightseeing there we went into a lineup for the Forbidden City.  It was a long line up and people kept pushing into the lineup ahead of us so we did not move along very quickly.  After maybe 30 min, we reached a security check point and got through.  Then we discovered that Forbidden City is closed on Mondays (the day we went).  So after all that, we did not get to see Forbidden City.  We also think that we did not actually have to go into that lineup because we saw some people enter at another point where they just walked through.   After that we decided to take the subway to the Summer Palace.  We got on the right line but we went in the wrong direction so we had to figure out how to correct that.  We did manage to get to the Summer Palace and enjoyed it.  Ray & I said that if we had a guide, it would have gone a lot more smoothly but I am glad we spent some time with my brother.

 

 

 

Lee was a fabulous guide.  We could see that her experience of 12 years as a guide has given her many skills to help tourists have a very good experience visiting China.  She had many interesting stories to tell and knew exactly what to do and where to go at all times.  She gave us good tips to help us protect ourselves from pickpockets and vendors that could be aggressive.  She even protected us from tripping on uneven rocks and paths by warning us ahead of time when we walked in the villages and in the Reed Flute Caves.  She knew what was a good thing to buy and what was not.  Many times it seemed that she knew what we needed to know before we did.  We enjoyed seeing the different parts of Guilin, some very beautiful and some quite old.  The Li River Cruise, Yangshuo area, the Dragon Backbone rice paddies terraces were all breathtaking.  We felt so lucky that it did not rain during our time in Guilin and that we got to see the Impression Show.  It was awe inspiring!

 

Evelyn was also a wonderful guide.  She is enthusiastic and very knowledgeable about the history, culture, and traditions of China and the areas we visited.  She was so organized that we managed to see a great deal in our short time in Shanghai.  My stomach was a bit upset on the day of the classic city tour and I needed to use the toilets many times.  I felt very grateful to Evelyn who always knew where a washroom was and we could get to them quickly so I was able to enjoy a day seeing the beauty of Shanghai, even with an unpredictable stomach.

 

Thank you also for helping me email our children to let them know we were safe and happy on our trip.  It saved them and their grandmother from worrying about us.

 

It was lovely to meet you in person and enjoy a delicious meal with you and Lee.  Thank you again for that and also for the lovely tea set.  It will always bring back memories of our time in China touring with your company.

 

Again, thank you for making our trip to China a great experience!

 

Sincerely,

 

Doreen & Raymond Jung