Simply awesome!
This Monday to Friday October tour of 4 cities in China really left us gasping for breath.
Firstly we cannot believe the price - RM399 per person for an all-inclusive tour of 4 cities in China with the following:
1. A young tour guide (Mandarin speaking) who offered to refund us the lunch money if we could not make it for lunch on the last day before we boarded our flight.
2. A bus that took us from city to city with a very skillful driver who avoided a massive traffic jam on the way from Shanghai to Hangzhou airport.
3. 3 meals a day including a very expensive buffet lunch (RM140 per person) at a revolving restaurant in Hangzhou with reasonable meals in each city featuring dishes unique to that city or region.
4. 3-shows including a very expensive show involving Chinese acrobats (about RM130 per person), flying gymnasts and dare-devil motorcyclists in a round-glass cage in Hangzhou.
5. Chinese battle enacted life in the Hollywood of China in Wuxi Studios and a delicate dance and song cultural show in Suzhou.
6. Boat cruises in Hangzhou on West Lake, a cruise on an ancient Chinese battleship in Wuxi.
7. The simply beautiful boat cruise in Shanghai on the Hangpu river with the mesmerizing and magnificent display of lights on commercial buildings with ever-changing designs and colors at every turn of the boat
8. Lodging at 4 local international very comfortable 5-star hotels in each city we went to with a clean beds and fully equipped bathroom offering amenities akin to 5 star hotels and daily buffet breakfasts!
We just cannot believe it!
Although flight is on our own, the price is still unbelievable! And to top it all this is our cheapest holiday cos between us we must have spent only about RM300 per person on gifts for family and friends!
One of our tour member mentioned that the tour which was actually worth RM1,399 (actual price) tour must have been sponsored by someone as the RM399 we paid was already busted on the first day! I found out later that it was actually subsidized by the tour agency Bon Holidays.
Shopping was not the "pressure you to buy" type.
We were taken to all the government-linked industries like the silkworm factory (now here is where you can literally touch the squirmy, squishy, squashy blue-green silkworms and watch how the entire silk harvesting process unfold before our eyes), the tea farms where the prices are fixed with no discount as we were told that the tea farms were government enterprises (that still did not prevent our tour mates from asking for freebies) and the Haining China Leather City Mall which appeared to be a government-sponsored initiative!
Whatever it is, we wish to thank Groupon and Bon Holidays for making this possible for us!
This trip equals the quality, the value and the depth of culture we experienced in our June Beijing tour.
The only difference was that we had only 3 shopping stops in Beijing where the selling was hard and fast. In this October tour, there was no hard-selling....it was as though the sales people were just promoting their products and leaving it to us whether we wanted to buy or not. Surprisingly even the medical hall people at TongRen Healthcare did not push Tim too hard to buy the medical package of RMB400 plus per month!
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