China Vacation Review: Beijing, Xian, Hong Kong, Terra Cotta Warriors, The Great Wall, Local Cuisine

Request top vehicles   Insist that they buy a cooler to keep cold water bottles in every vehicle.  Upgrade to first class on trains and inter country flights.  Request fine dining for all meals included.  (The meals were honestly gross sometimes.  The hot pot meal in chengdu was inedible — the waitress dropped raw chicken on our side dishes and didn’t replace them.  We were afraid to eat the food on our table after that!)  in Hong Kong we told our guide that we were making our own reservations for dinner — we just didn’t trust the itinerary anymore.  We had a fabulous meal at another restaurant instead.  The 2 shows (Kung foo in bejing and the face changing show in Chendgu were bad.  Very gimicky. And very cheesy.).  Finally, do NOT do the panda volunteer experience!  It was awful and a complete rip off  (we paid extra for it and we left after 2 hours). We drove 90 minutes to have what we thought would be an incredible, behind the scenes experience, volunteering with the staff of the panda sanctuary and having up close and personal time with the pandas.  We arrived, signed a form, put on a tshirt and then our GUIDE from access this travel company handed us a broom and told us to shovel sh$t.  I’m not kidding.  No introduction to staff members, not a word about the pandas, their history, their habits, ... nothing.  Just a broom and put to work.  We were told that we would be cleaning for 2 hours... with our guide standing there watching us.  We don’t mind getting our sleeves rolled up and helping — but this was weird.  We weren’t learning anything and no one was even taking to us.  We decided to stay until the first feeding and then leave.  It was a complete waste of money and our time.  It was the worst part of our trip.