Author: Alison, Rosemary, Brian & Brendan from Australian, Jun. 23, 2007

May. 29 - Jun. 16, 2007
19 days in total

Shanghai - Guilin - Beijing - Xian - Chengdu - Chongqing - Yangtze Cruise - Yichang - Shanghai

· Click for the details of the tour itinerary we took

Miss. Sophie Lu

Details of the tour itinerary we took

Hello Sophie!

Thank you for sending the photos of us all in Guilin and the lovely photo of you in Kunming.

We really enjoyed our China holiday and were very impressed with the service from China Odyssey Tours. Our guides and drivers were all very professional and we learnt a lot of China’s history from our very well informed guides. The guides we spent the most time with were 'Jack' in Guilin, 'Jane'in Beijing, and 'Maggie' in Xian and 'June' in Chengdu. They were all excellent!

There were many highlights on our tour. I really enjoyed the Li River Cruise and shopping in Yangshou. The river system night tour in Guilin was also very enjoyable.

We also liked the bike ride that Jack took us on. The Guilin night market was good fun.

We had a good time on our own visiting the Forbidden City, Tianamen Square and the Temple of Heaven Park in Beijing and we found the taxi and subway systems to be excellent ways of getting around.

I enjoyed the overnight train trip to Xian - we don’t have commuter trains in Tasmania so it was a novelty for us to catch a train and sleep overnight on it!

Of course the Terracotta Soldiers trip was a highlight and Maggie is very knowledgeable about the history in Xian. She took us up to the wall around the city and we hired bicycles and rode around the wall for an hour and a half. This was an activity which we also really enjoyed very much. I think Maggie is an excellent guide and you should definitely keep using her services.

We all loved the visit to the Panda Sanctuary with June in Chengdu. June also took Alison and I to a 'snack' food restaurant where we each tried about 15 little samples of Sichuan food. That was good fun. She also bought us tickets to an Opera/variety show (much cheaper than the Beijng ticket prices) and we enjoyed the show very much. She took us to a vegetarian restaurant in a Budhist temple and the food was wonderful and very cheap. It only cost 100 RMB for five of us and we had many courses. We couldn’t eat it all!

We all had a good time on the Yangtze River Cruise and we met some really nice people. Brian enjoyed the visit to the Three Gorges Dam project very much.

Overall we had a really great holiday in China! The service was great, people were friendly and we felt very safe all the time in China. The three star hotels were very good.

Our son Brendan didn’t enjoy the food and didn't eat very much in China. He is a very fussy eater and wouldn’t even try some of the lovely dishes. We went out to dinner in Beijing with one of Brian's work colleagues and our host paid for a banquet. Brendan felt pressured to try the food (so that he wasn't being rude to our host) and found that he actually liked the Peking Duck and Chicken with Chillies. You will notice in the photo I have attached that he only has a cup of tea, glass of coke and a bowl of plain white rice in front of him. This is what he ate the most - and now he says he hates rice! Alison, Brian and I all really loved the Chinese food and we enjoyed trying local dishes. I am surprised the Chinese ladies are so slim - because the food is so good and there is so much of it!

Many thanks to you Sophie for arranging such a great holiday for us. It ran very smoothly and we felt relieved that we had somebody we could call if something went wrong. I will recommend your company and your services to all our colleagues and friends here in Australia!

Warm regards from
Rosemary Giles
Jun. 23, 2007