Travel Review: Review of Exploring China 2009

This China tour operator sent us the most detailed itinerary of any agents we heard from. Flora was very responsive to email and willing to work with us to tweak the itinerary. I have only two complaints. I was told prior to booking that included meals would be at local restaurants with "good food and environment," but the included meals were always at large tourist restaurants with okay food and a sterile atmosphere. We never had any choice in the food served to us. The other complaint is in the lack of detail provided for an unusual portion of our trip. The travel agency suggested that we stay overnight on Hua Shan (mountain) to watch the sunrise, but they did not mention that there was no running water or heat on the top of the mountain and that the hotel that they booked us in was a 3 hour hike from the cable car station. While they were able to change our hotel with no problem to the one right next to the cable car station, we felt that the extreme lack of amenities and hiking distances involved (it would have taken hours of hiking in the dark to get to the spot to see the sunrise--we didn't know that this could not be seen from the hotel) should have been mentioned before booking. There is very little information about Hua Shan available in English. However, everything else about the trip went very well. Aside from the mountain, the hotels were nice. The guides were always waiting for us when we arrived in a new city. Our guides were knowledgeable. The drivers were safe, although we were disappointed when the van provided in Shanghai did not have seatbelts. We enjoyed the activities from the itinerary. We felt some pressure from some of the guides to purchase extra activities or shows--we would have preferred to have these choices presented to us prior to arriving so that we could make informed decisions instead of being put on the spot. The amount of time planned for at the different sites was appropriate for us to be able to see everything (with the exception of some sights in Xian, where time was available, but the guide rushed us).