Dear Elaine,

We arrived back from our travels 3 days ago. Our first day in the Bund View Room on 87th Floor of the spectacular Grand Hyatt Hotel—looking out the window and seeing how enormously Shanghai had changed in less than 30 years, visiting World Class hotel restaurants, tripping across the road, on our own, to discover the magnificent new Aquarium, etc.

 All 3 Guides were good, but we had serious concern about their preparations to handle our special excursions—we got on particularly well with the Guide (and Driver) in Hangzhou, and enjoyed many interesting “experimental” meals together at restaurants neither had previously visited.

In addition to the Hyatt, the Sheraton at Suzhou was very pleasant. Restaurants were mostly selected by ourselves. We were on an “la carte”, pay aa s you go, basis—this worked excellently and we enjoyed our eating enormously.

If they want to do anything other than Standard China Highlight Tourist Trips, they should insist on involving the local Manager/Guide in the pre-planning and making of special bookings—accepting that this may add to the cost of the package. In hindsight it would have been worth an extra 20% (2,000US $) for us to have had effective local planning of our special trips to the M50 Art Gallery, the Sungiao Modern Agricultural Area, the Hangzhou Chinese Medical Hospital, etc.

Yes, certainly I would be willing to correspond by email, as a reference. I could, and probably should, go on—but fear you might just think me a moaner, looking for a refund—this we certainly don’t want. I expect you have heard of the worries we had in establishing contact with the new Guide on our arrival in Hangzhou and the problem with the Sofitel Hotel? Our guide in Shanghai was a charming young lady who had a rough time meeting us, unfortunately having to wait 4 hours at Shanghai Airport for our flight arrival—we were very sorry but she made no complaint. No doubt she was well able to handle standard trips but was hopelessly unprepared for our two special requests. Our Guide at Suzhou was a splendid chap and everything went smoothly, but of course here there were no special requests. The Guide in Hangzhou, as I have said, was an excellent fellow and certainly tried to do his very best for us, in difficult circumstances—we found it an interesting experience.

Kind Regards

Robert Craig

• Client's Information: Robert Derek, United Kingdom
• Tour Starting Dates: September 10, 2007
• Tour Itinerary: 13 Days Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou Tour
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