Holiday in Beijing in review - June 1 to June 5 2013

Amazing and an awesome deal!

That's how we would describe our recent holiday in Beijing.

Its amazing cos its 5-star hotel lodging with 5-star meals and 5-star tourist sites from day one.

One of our tour member told us that he just went into the Matta Fair, looked for the most expensive deal and paid for it! 

I guess this is how we feel about the vacation organized by Apple. 

Its amazing because it is one of the most expensive China holidays organized by a tour agency (at least in the recent Matta fair). Its also amazing because its limited in terms of shopping visits. 


Knowing the infamous shopping visits organized by most China tour companies and stories we heard about "hard-sell", we were wary about shopping trips. 


We heard stories about "fake" fruits (fruits with color sprayed on), "fake" money (fake yuan given back to us in small change), exorbitant prices (to start bargaining at 70% of the quoted price and to walk away if they refuse to budge), angry faces and rude comments if we were to sample their products and walk away without buying! 

We did not want a tour where we had to do a lot of shopping stops and be "pressured" into buying things. Perhaps "cheap" tours carry with it a price - the price of too many shopping stops to make up for the cheap price of the tour!

Anyway at RM 4,000 per person, I would say that it was worth every cent and more.....!

Reasons:

• 5-star accommodation at JW Marriot - Marriot City Hall and Marriot at Beijing Northeast. The other hotel we stayed in was called Auspicious Business Hotel which was built on an area of hot springs at Changping. Amazing hotel but one in which I had a weird dream and our tour leader had a "weird" visitation. More about this later.....

• 5-star breakfasts, lunches and dinners. The top breakfast venue has to be at Marriot at Beijing Northeast and the top lunch venue has to be at Matsuko. The top dinner venue has to be the emperor's meal we had at Auspicious Hotel.

• 5-star tour visits. We visited so many important places in Beijing. More about that later....

• 5-star shows. We saw the famous mask changing opera show (2x), traditional Chinese dancing and singing, traditional Chinese instruments being played, a world famous show called the Legend of Kungfu, Legend of the Mask Dynasty (this is a simply amazing show with many stage effects that really showcased the prowess of Chinese performing arts and theater), traditional Chinese juggling show with plates performed by a Chinese chef and a modern magic show.

• 3 shopping visits only. Silk shop, pixiu shop at the ZhengYangMen Museum and a tea shop. China sales ladies are very aggressive!! Beware the "hard-sell"! As one of our tour member puts it "If you are not interested to buy, don't say anything, don't ask anything". After our first experience at the tea-shop where we bought close to RM150 plus worth of tea and persuaded to buy some more to enable the sales lady to "meet her target" after all our tour members have bought the tea and boarded the bus......we learnt something....how to avoid parting with our money to buy things we don't need! What disturbed me was the way they "pleaded" with me and Tim and the tour guide to buy the tea which was originally quoted at RM600 plus at the price of just RM100 just when we were getting ready to leave the shop! They said that they wanted to make a total sales of RM1000 from our group in order to meet their sales target. She was so convincing! If the sales pitch don't work use the persuasion of the heart! Later one of our experienced tour member told us that such a sales pitch is not uncommon in China! 

Anyway it was also at the tea-shop that I gave away the first of the tracts I brought with me to China and their comments were that they were impressed with the dual languages on the tracts.

O yes at this tea-shop also I "met" a bird in a cage placed near the toilet who greeted me in Mandarin "Nee how mah" (how are you) in both a man's voice and a lady's voice! The salesgirls at the shop later confirmed that the bird in the cage could indeed speak those few Mandarin words!

More to come....