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[amylau]

Could someone recommend some travel companies with good credit for Americans visiting China? I’m going to China in August. Many thanks!

[aopaq]

Maybe you can take a look at China Travel Service (CTS) who are based out of Hong Kong. I have never used them but I have heard their name mentioned before. Their website is: CTS

[bubbletea]

Could someone recommend some travel companies with good credit for Americans visiting China? I’m going to China in August. Many thanks!

Travel agencies are many in China. You could choose according your own condition, like what kind of tour package you want. A travel group or a private package? Group travel agents fulfill the net and it is not too hard to search and make the decision yourself after the comparision of price and programme arrangments.If you wanna ensure the maximize your personal interest, you could join in a private package to 100%focus on your own interest. Hope this would inspire youchina private tours Hope this would help!

[laos_info]

I work with www.chinahotel-link.com/ and have had positive feedback - although personally I haven't been on any of their tours yet

[trax2china]

It's good that you should ask this as most Chinese Travel Agencies dont tell their clients about all the time that is taken to go shopping when transfering from A to B sites. If you like to shop then its fine, but it leaves very little time for anything else.

If like me you dont like to be taken shopping then check out www.easytourchina.com they can guarantee NO SHOPPING

[happysheep]

In south-west China try Lijiang Guides - a mix of Western residents and ethnic minorities who can speak English.
We wary of some tour companies which take you on shopping tours.

[miss.chris]

my son Nate Siemens started a non-profit eco-tour business after returning from teaching there for a couple of years. My brother and I will travel with it departing on May 15th. You can follow my blog if you like. His site is www.dragonsvillage.org/Home.html. He is quite busy with a new business but his contacts in China are great and I think that they would be glad to help.

[dennis10024]

I just returned from my third trip to China in the past four years.

In 2006, we had to take our second trip to Shanghai to meet with some people. While there, we wanted to see something more than Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, which we had already visited. Searching the web, we looked for sites that would let us put together our own visit with breaks from the program to do things with friends. We found lots of good ideas and pricing at China Highlights, which we decided to use because most of the others required us to identify ourselves with our goals before they would give us pricing information.

Unfortunately, because of the plans of others, we had to change our start and finish dates several times and also the order of our itinerary because others wanted us in specific places on changing dates. Each time, China Highlights quickly sent an email response without complaint saying the change had been made. Their responses were so quick and lacking frustration that we began to fear that they were a scam and that after our activities in Shanghai were over, we would be left waiting at our hotel for a guide who never came. Instead, we had a flawless visit to Hangzhou, Xian, the Yangtze, Chongqing, Dazu, Guilin, Suzhou, and back to Shanghai. What we really appreciated was that we were able to drop from their standard plan stops that did not interest us and substitute some more interesting visits. We had only one disappointment in the whole trip. Some of the places where we were taken to eat seemed to dumb down the Chinese food for the finicky tastes of Western travelers. We wanted something a bit more authentic. After we returned and compared notes with other food-loving travelers, we learned that our experience was less neutered than those of several friends who had visited China in groups.

This year we decided to return to China. We have followed the fast pace of change in China and wanted to see the old China, the rural China, before it disappeared. We decided that we wanted to see the minority regions of southwestern China, some of the poorest provinces of China. We wanted to visit villages and find old visions of China. We wanted to get closer to Chinese life. We only had a little more than two weeks. Therefore we did not have time for Beijing, Shanghai, Guilin and other cities normally on any tour of China. Although we had been given the name of a few other online travel services, we started with China Highlights to put together our itinerary. We had confidence that they had thought through the best way to see any part of China.

Our first email was to the agent who helped us in 2006, but she was no longer with them. Our second email got a quick response with a 16 day itinerary that seemed to satisfy our needs and fit our budget. We visited other sites to look for trips like that but found few. We did get some confirmations of the scope of the proposed itinerary. Over weeks, as we talked to friends who had visited the area, our plan went through several iterations, including the dates after we learned more about weather conditions and festival dates. A scholar showed us magnificent pictures of Shangri-la and Deqin. The China Highlights site further excited us about that region. Our agent at China Highlights fitted it into our program, which now ran 19 days. Our visit started off in Quilin, which we did not visit except for an early morning stroll around the lake, and then included Longsheng, Sanjiang, Zhaoxing , Congjiang, Rongjiang, KaiLi, Kunming, Dali, Lijiang, Zhongdian (Shangri-La), Deqin, Leshan, and Chengdu, and many villages in between. Of those, only Chengdu and Kunming have populations of more than 1 million (including the rural areas included in the city), and they were the only towns of more than 160,000 people.

Even if you had doubled our expectations for the trip, they would have been exceeded by the experience. Whatever minor problems we had with a hotel room were quickly taken care of by the guides. The agent who arranged our trip for us called us a few times during the trip to make sure everything was fine.

Every day, we had some experience that made us say “jackpot” because we thought we had hit it big with some new experience. For example, we were especially pleased to have several guides who really liked food and were happy to introduce us to things that Americans might not normally eat. We passed on bee larvae and a few others, but it helped us understand that we had options if we really wanted them. We love food that is really spicy. The guides did not quite believe us at first, but after a while they were instructing the cooks not to hold back on the peppers. Because of the itinerary, we could not eat in dining rooms on many days. We had to sit on short stools at a low table and eat in a roadside place in an isolated town. It surely seemed like an authentic experience to us, and we could tell from some of the other people who had obviously driven long distances to eat there that the places had good reputations.

These places were out of the way, although they were along our route. One evening, as we were driving back down to Shangri-la, a man from Taiwan asked if he could take our photograph. He could not believe that we two Americans were in this isolated village all alone enjoying a fabulous meal. We seemed so out of place to him that he had to show the people back home. We explained to him that our driver and guide were discrete and were eating elsewhere with people they knew. Nevertheless we gave the appearance of being truly independent. Some of our guides ate with us, giving us lessons in how to eat. Both approaches worked.

There was one problem with the daily meals. They were gigantic compared to what we put on our table back home. We would eat as much as we could and then force ourselves to eat even more, only to be asked by a kindly server if we did not like the food because we left so much behind. [I should note that my companion speaks Mandarin.]

There was one other food issue. The hotels in Guizhou province are not set up for Westerners eating breakfast. China Highlights and some other agencies assume that Westerners want toast and eggs and cereal and jam and orange juice and American coffee, and they bring all that, including the toaster, to the breakfast table so that we can feel truly at home. We wanted to breakfast on Chinese noodles. It was hard for us to tell the guide and driver, who had made such an effort on our behalf, that we could eat like them. Eventually, we gorged ourselves on the two traditions.

When we got to the Tibetan parts of Yunnan, our guide asked us if we wanted to eat in the homes of her family members. We embraced the idea.

Okay, the trip was not just about eating. The scenery was magnificent. About 97% of the area is mountains. The valleys are breathtaking. The mountains are majestic. Walking at almost 4700 meters is exciting. We saved almost 1500 photos. But it was the people we came to see. They were extraordinarily friendly.

Perhaps it helped that my companion speaks Mandarin, although that is only a second or third language for many of these people. Even in a village of 800 people we saw children 2-3 years old who were instructed to say “Allo” to us or “Bye-bye”. The language of humanity brought many shared smiles. The guides took us through homes and served as our interpreters with these ambassadors of minority China.

Two of our jackpots were invitations to weddings that we could not attend. In each case, once in Guizhou province and once in Yunnan province, we came upon people preparing a feast for a wedding that would take place the next day. We were invited to return for the wedding or at least stay around for lunch with the party makers. Here in the USA the family hires a caterer for all the guests who know not what to give to the couple. In China we saw perhaps 50-60 people preparing the vegetables and butchering the meat for the next day’s festivities. No one worried about a few more people joining in. In Zhaoxing, we saw perhaps 50 men at a giant banquet. They had just ended the day building a home for a new bride and groom. Wow, how easy it seems for them to start a family. The wedding celebration and home acquisition are communal activities. The newlywed couple does not move into their home buried in debt.

That generosity was found in many places. We had read how people who leave their villages for jobs in the city send money back to their families to support them. We saw how guides tried to give their personal funds to villagers or spend money in their villages but how often villagers resisted the offerings. Their sense of hospitality meant that they should receive no compensation for our intrusion. We heard how villagers share their bounty with those less fortunate. We saw some people who looked like they had returned from the city because of the economic downturn and where now doing village work in their city clothes.

Southwest China is an area that few Americans visit. During our nearly three weeks, I doubt that we saw more than 120 Westerner the whole time, and most of them were French or German speakers. We learned that the tourist office in Dali believes that they had 30,000 Western visitors in a single year. Americans were probably only 10-15% of them, but this is a big center for Chinese tourism. Therefore there is a decent infrastructure for tourism and still some sense of adventure. And we managed to spend 12 of our nights in 4 or 5 star hotels. So it was adventures and comfort (if you don’t mind hard Chinese beds). China Highlights made it easy.

[kevin_china]

Could someone recommend some travel companies with good credit for Americans visiting China? I’m going to China in August. Many thanks!

Hi Amylau
in August, there'll be a tibetan horse-racing festival, which is highly recommended. you could rent a car drive from Chengdu(the home town of pandas) to Litang(a town tibetan plateau where the horse racing hanpens).and then through Shangrila to Lijiang(ancient Chinese town ) . about a 10 days trip. a plenty to see!
i'm Kevin, a local in Chengdu, if you need any information or pictures, contact me by : kevinsparadise@hotmail.com

enjoy your trip !

[sucre1990]

Could someone recommend some travel companies with good credit for Americans visiting China? I’m going to China in August. Many thanks!

I am a university student of China with intepret skill. Since I will travel in my summer vacation in august maybe I can be your company.sucre1990@live.cn

[crystalblue]

hi, see whether the following websites are of any help:


http://chinahighlights.com/

http://yeschinatour.com/

http://chinahighlights.com/

Good luck!

[dym888]

I would recommend tour-ing.com They are an American company geared towards travelers aged 21-35. Their tours are centered around sightseeing, networking and partying for young adults. They offer city tours as well as a 2 week tour of China covering the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Hangzhou, and Suzhou.

[scottshangguan]

I'd like to recommend www.chinaaccesstravel.com

I would first like to say that I am the Marketing Manager of the company, so I might be a little biased, but it is a fine company.

I personally have chosen each and every hotel, restaurant, site, guide, and car and driver that we use. I am an American who moved to China 5 years ago and have traveled extensively. Please give our company a shot. I have personally created each of our itineraries to allow people to not only see the sites, but also experience China's culture first hand. I have traveled with other companies and was very unimpressed by their tours which just rushed me from site to site. I wanted to create something different. I'm totally redoing our website, so it might not be finished when you visit it.

Please feel free to fill out an inquiry and tell us where you would like to go and what your interests are and I'll create a custom tour just for you. The tour design and bookings are all free.

If you mention that you got the website from this forum, I'll add a free banquet dinner or show onto your itinerary.

[pmohan77]

I am very satisfied and would strongly recommend China Highlights. ChinaHighlights was the true magic behind my spellbinding vacation in China. From start to finish, they knew exactly what would be of interest to me and my family and organized the tour perfectly. Certain aspects of the tour such as the bike tours in Guilin countryside and the Xian wall were once in a lifetime experiences. The tour guides they provide are very knowledgeable and added greatly to the wonderful experience. The personalized driver, tour guide and itinerary provided the uniqueness in experience that is lacking on other group tours. I would strongly recommend ChinaHighlights to anyone visiting China as a family. I visited Guilin, Xian and Beijing over a 7 day period and they hosted us really well. My birthday fell on one of the days of the tour and they treated me and my family to a custom cake and a tour of the Shangrila in Guilin. I wish every country had travel agencies like China highlights. I always felt at home, even though I did not know the language and has never been there.
I chose the five star hotels and they were excellent. The hotels that they prvided were Sheraton in Guilin, Sofitel in Xian and Crowne Plaza in Beijing.

[fabio09]

I also think Chinahighlights.com is very good. We booked a Yantze River cruise with them last year. Thay provided us with a very clean ship. The entertainments aboard are also very good. I booked a Zhouzhuang Water Town Tour with them last week and we are now looking forward to finding more excitement!

[gotourchina]

Could someone recommend some travel companies with good credit for Americans visiting China? I’m going to China in August. Many thanks!

I hope I am not too late to the game, but

http://www.GoTourChina.com

Go Tour China is a GREAT agency to go through. Friendly and experienced

A++ tours to China. Plus they are some of the most affordable I have seen.


Paul@GoTourChina.com
435-767-1081