Testimonial

It would be hard to choose between the Great Wall and the Yellow Mountain.  We found both spectacular.

The guides were all very good.  Johnny in Beijing gave us a great introduction to the city and gave us excellent tourist tips like teaching us the very useful skill of how to simply and politely say we weren't interested when approached by vendors.  Tony in Huangshan was very patient and took things at a slow pace on the day my daughter was feeling unwell.  He also went above and beyond staying with us after our visit to Hongcon and making sure that we were served in the very busy, very good restaurant he'd suggested for dinner after a very long day.  If we had to pick a favourite it would be Angela in Xian.  She was knowledgeable about the sites, very efficient, ordered fantastic lunches and (maybe because she was a woman and we were two women) was extra solicitous about our comfort when it came to washrooms etc. She also managed to sort out the name confusion in my daughter's ticket without having to go to a special desk.

The hotels were all fine.  The locations were excellent.  The breakfast in Huangshan wasn't up to that in Xian and Beijing, and all the facilities weren't operational in Beijing, but then we weren't there much.  The hotel and restaurant on Yellow Mt. was not on a par with the others, but considering where it was, and seeing how food and supplies are all carried up the mountain by porters, we certainly aren't about to complain.  And it was adequate.

In all, we really enjoyed our visit.
A couple of tips: We had trouble finding the "many restaurants" that were supposed to be close to the hotel in Beijing.  It never occurred to us to go to the top floor of the mall and department stores!  Most often in North America the food courts are in the basement.
Re: cycling on the city wall in Xian.  It was a great experience.  But we didn't realize until we were well on our way that the bicycles were for people with shorter legs than ours!!  It made the going very hard.  Asking to have the bicycle seats raised would have been smart.
We loved Yellow Mt. but beginning the second day before sunrise and then not leaving until almost 11 pm (and our plane was late leaving) makes for a very very long day.  I know you don't control the airline schedules - but we were very glad that Yellow Mt. was the last leg of our trip, and we could take it easy the next day in Shanghai.  If we'd done the tour the other way around it would have been very exhausting.

Dear Virginia,
 
First, thank you for all you assistance getting the trip to Xian arranged and helping us get the payments to you. I am back home now and I think finally back to the local time zone which is 12-hours different from Beijing. Like you, I did not feel well for a few days but am back at work business as usual. 
 
The five of us had a wonderful time on the one day trip to Xian. I can say it was a lot of things to see and do on such a short schedule. Our flight from Beijing to Xian was on schedule and no problems. The plane appeared to be full.  Since the plane was full, we couldn't figure out how you were able to get us seats on such short notice! 
 
We arrived at the Xian airport and Eileen was waiting for us with a sign that had my name on it. So that was very easy to connect with her. It rained most of the day in Xian, but that wasn't much of a problem since most of the activities were indoors. We drove to the City Wall and were able to see how it was constructed, etc. We did get to go on the wall in the rain ... but we couldn't have stayed very long anyway. We then went to a place where replicas were made of the terra cotta figures and shopped a bit. From there we went to lunch. The restaurant was fine and the food very good. Then we drove to the terra cotta soldiers. We all were awestruck on the huge numbers and scope of the area. Around 4:30pm we left to head back to the airport.  Again the flight back to Beijing was uneventful.
 
Eileen was very nice and explained everything we saw as we drove to the various venues and was extremely knowledgeable on the many questions we asked her.  She stayed with us (except for lunch) and was quite an excellent tour guide. Also the driver was very courteous and nice.
 
All of us knew we had a tight schedule for the trip in one day, but everyone very much enjoyed it and the opportunity to see Xian and the terra cotta figures.
 
So again, thank you for all you help in the arrangements for a successful adventure! :-)
 
We would not hesitate to recommend your services and hope that in the future we may contact you again.
 
Randy

Dear Eva

We really enjoyed our trips and we have great memories of China! 

With regard to the questions we think that they are very difficult to answer since we really enjoyed our trip and it somehow would be unfair to rate anything / anybody as best! However we think the mountaind wutai shan and especially the very very scenic drive to pingyao in the afternoon was superb! All our female tour guides were outstanding and all hotels ok - top restaurants were: in xi-an on the day we visited the terra cotta warriors, and in baidahe lunch on the second day - superb!!!
 
Kind regards
 
Rudolf
 

Dear Rebecca,

I had a wonderful trip with China Highlights.I think my most memorable experience was Mt. Huashan.  However, my most fun attraction was lunch with the local family at Hutong in Beijing.

I really enjoyed all my guides.  However, I think the best guide was Janice.  Now I must say Janice has an advantage over the others because she was a director and had much more experience than the others.  I also enjoyed Joan because I learned a lot from her.  Jerry and I had a great day together, but we also had such a short time together.

All the meals were excellent.  I enjoyed the meal with the family the most at Hutong. Not only the food was great, but the atmosphere was absolutely great!

All the trips that I did were amazing.  I can’t begin to explain in words how they all affected my thoughts, my knowledge, and love for China. I think everyone should eat with the locals, and visit the Hutong; simply to see and feel what the locals feel and do.  Visiting Hangzhou is an absolute must, so people can experience the paradise on Earth.

Of course I would recommended you. I have already recommended the company to my pharmacist & mother-in-law.

Faye

Dear Eva,

We just arrive May 9 at our house, very happy because we did a fantastic trip in China, we know many things, many places, thank you for all.

Many of the places that we visited were special, but there were two  things we liked most: Lijiang and the Yangtze River cruise.

We liked the guides a lot, so professional and were always willing to help and we felt at home, they are the Lijiang and the Guilin guide, sorry but we dont remenber the names.

The hotel which stands out in service, location and comfort was the Bell Tower Hotel Xian. The Golden Dragon hotel in Kunming  was not up to standards. The visit to the  Grand View tower seemed a disappointment, at least we have the guide took us to the flower market that seemed interesting.
 
It would be advisable to inform passengers if they make a commemorative trip for us, is to take precautions with their different climatic changes in each area of the country, when  we arrived  Lijiang, we had very cold. Please take as suggestions, not criticism.

Now that I recommend to anyone doing this trip dont forget to visit Pingyao and Lijiang, which are cities that still retain their traditions, it's nice and interesting to see the big cities that are in a constant renewal and progress, but what makes a country, its traditions and give a lot of shame that a country like China with so much culture, lose all this.

I recommend not to miss the spectacle of Sanji Liu Impression in Guilin, fantastic, as in the Shanghai Era Circus was very good.
And dont miss to eat Pekines Duck,is so delicious.

Maybe I recommend too eat a typical dishes from China, but not all the time  it was very hard for our stomach, it was so spicy.

And here in Peru  always wil be someone to wait for you.
 
Maria

Dear Grace,

Sorry for the delayed response.Was very busy since coming home.Some tour members have not responded so sending those photos that have been agreed upon. As per your questions, see below:

Potala Palace and Sera Monastery are the most memorable attractions. All guides were good in their respective places. As to the hotels, Sunworld Hotel was the best out of the tour. Lunch was the best in Beijing on our last day. Snowland Restaurant was great especially if one wants to eat familiar food as they have a great variety to choose from. We will surely recommend your company to our friends. We may visit China again in the not too distant future.

Jen

Hi, Virginia
 You definitely can use our e-mail address for a contact if someone is interested in using China Highlights.  We had a wonderful time in Beijing.  We felt like celebrities with our own private car and driver, and Jay, our wonderful tour guide.  She was about the age of one of our daughters (30), but she looked out for us like a mother hen.  She has a fabulous sense of humor, and really knew her history.  She would put much of it in story form, which made it all the more interesting.  The restaurants she took us to were so good that I will probably never eat Chinese food that good again.

Jay met us at the port where our cruise ship docked and she and the driver took us to Beijing.  The cost was much less than Princess cruise wanted for their three day tour.  Plus, on their tour you were on a bus with about 40 other people.  With China Highlights it was just my husband and I, our driver and the tour guide.  They had an itinerary for us, but we could change it or add to it as we wanted to.  We could take as much time at one place or as little time as we wanted to.  We spent three weeks on a cruise starting in Bangkok, but I have to say the time we spent in Beijing with Jay as our tour guide was the highlight of our vacation.

Our driver was excellent.  Believe me, as an American, you do  not want to try and drive on your own in Beijing.  It is a bit different than the way we drive, which added to the adventure of it all.

Our favorite attraction was definitely the Great Wall.  We took a gondola up to the wall, where we walked for about two hours.  We could have gone longer, it was up to us.  We decided on the toboggans to ride down from the wall.  That was a lot of fun too.
 
We highly recommend China Highlights.  We were a little worried about booking with a tour company in another country that we knew nothing about, but we are so glad we did.  Your company lived up to everything they said they would do and so much more.  There are times in your life when magic happens.  That is how we felt about our three days in Beijing.
 
P.S. Travel Tip:  There is no toilet paper in public bathrooms - take your own tissue.
 
Janis and Richard  

Dear Virginia:
We really wanted to express our thanks to you and your organization for putting together such a wonderful trip in your Country.
Everything about the trip was FIRST CLASS. The guides were pleasant and knowledgeable, always on time, and fun to be with (especially Eileen in Beijing) We were amused that the drivers were always Mr....and the guides were first name basis. It was so nice to be taken care of in such a big country, we could not have done it on our own!
We are sorry to have missed meeting you in Guilin, but realize you were tied up.  
To sum it up, everything was perfect, the only suggestion we might make was to allow a little more free time to just look around and do a little shopping.
Thanks again to you and all the nice young people on your team.
Kindest regards, 

Fran and Dave

Hi Sunny,
 
The most memorable attraction we visited were Xian/Beijing especially terracotta warrior sites and museums. For Beijing it is the forbidden city/tiananmen square because of historical/cultural importance of it.
 
CHRISTINA at Xian is our best guide. she's major in history so she knows how to tell us the story of its importance in history to make it more interesting. Compared to Allen, who is our Beijing tour guide, he's not strong historically or does not mention historical significance of it. She is flexible when my sister got ill she knows to stop pushing and we went back to the hotel and cut our tour short.
 
I think we would like to recommend your tour company highly. Overall our experiences with all the arrangements are wonderful esp. the wrap up part of the birthday cake was a surprise since it made our day brighter since that day there was alot of travelling. For places to visit I think the terracotta museum was my best vote and restaurant would be the one in yuyuan garden Lau something with all the nice dumplings/soup dumplings got my best test b uds. bizzarre food in bejing we went on our own with regular food stand that has all bizarre food in night time is a do not miss food as well.

YES I am overall very happy with china hightlight (despite the fact we hated the cruise yangtze by president). Overall, I think the coordination was well planned. Enough transit time and no hassle. Yes I would be happy to talk to potential customer since it is hard to get the feel seeing just the webpage. I think I also was scared to pay so much money for our trip to some unknown person in guilin, like a gamble but it worked since the company lived up to its promise. Also nice that sunny called me on the phone to ensure that there's a legitimate company and likely not to cheat.
 
OVERALL, we are very pleased with guides/drivers as a group they are great! They are reliable and trustworthy people and I hope they find their profession interesting and fun. I hope we did tip them enough for their services for the trip. We would go with chinahighlight again next year since my mother really enjoyed the trip!

Cheers for you Sunny

Vilasinee

Hi Michael,

We had a wonderful time in Beijing, thanks in most part to our wonderful guide and driver.

Without a doubt, The Great Wall was the most memorable attaction. I still am amazed that I actually was on the Great Wall. Even though it was a holiday weekend and there were crowds, once we were on the wall we had plenty of room to walk and take photos. A definite highlight of our entire trip.

Vivian our guide in Beijing, was wonderful. She was charming and always on time. She never stopped smiling and you couldn't help but be happy when she was around. She was able to make minor adjustments when she could see that we were lagging just a bit from all the walking. She spoke great English and even taught us a few Chinese words. I really liked that she would tell us names in Chinese and have us try to repeat her words. We had many laughs and I would highly recommend her for any future tourists. She was also able to work in a couple of extra stops (photo stop at Olympic venues which we really appreciated) and a stop at the silk factory, probably because we had not spent a lot of time hiking the Great Wall. Also, our driver was wonderful. That traffic was amazing yet our driver was always waiting for us and always got us where we needed to go and was also timely. When a car cut him off on one of the streets, he apologized profusely to us, and it wasn't even his fault. He never lost his temper in all that holiday traffic and was amazingly calm.

Yes--all meals were great. Which ones did you enjoy most? Hard to say as we enjoyed all the meals and each had something a little different, even if it was just a different spice. We mentioned to Vivian at our first meal that we really liked the soup and she ordered that for us at another lunch--she really paid attention to what we liked. If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be the restaurant near the Great Wall where we tried the toasted fish and other dishes, but I also liked the little out-of-the way places that tourists would not regularly go to, like the first day when we went to the small restaurant in the hutong area. While we had to try the Peking Duck Dinner, it was good and something we had to do, but I liked the small restaurants best.

Also, Michael, thanks for all your help. I think one of the reasons that I booked with your company is that you were always so prompt with responding to e-mails and very easy to correspond with. I let others on our ship know how pleased we were with your company as a couple of them indicated that they had guides that were not that great. We also have a friend who is a travel agent and I usually forward to him any companies that we use and really like so if he has clients he can recommend them.
 
Thanks once again for all your help! .

Steve and Fran Susman