{"id":2580,"date":"2015-06-01T13:36:43","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T17:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grandescapades.com\/?p=2580"},"modified":"2017-08-07T17:03:09","modified_gmt":"2017-08-07T21:03:09","slug":"trip-review-china-land-riverboat-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grandescapades.com\/travel-blog\/trip-review-china-land-riverboat-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"Trip Review: China Land &#038; Riverboat Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CHINA LAND &amp; RIVERBOAT TOUR TRAVELER REVIEW<\/p>\n<p>Hello,<\/p>\n<p>We are back \u2013 safe and sound\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Overall opinion:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Amazing country \u2013 worth seeing \u2013 growing fast ( not sure how long they will sustain that growth before running out of money) &#8211; lots of traffic \u2013 lots of people (especially at the tourist locations) \u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Chinese people:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Not very friendly\u2026 Generally do not smile at you \u2013 even the hotel staff\u2026 If someone bumped you there was no attempt to excuse themselves\u2026<\/li>\n<li>I took some walks on the streets in front of the hotels at night and early mornings and felt safe\u2026<\/li>\n<li>The Chinese tour groups and their guides just bulldozed over all the other groups\u2026 They would move into a spot with their loud speaker and chat away without any consideration for another group already there\u2026 Found this very tiring and annoying&#8230; \u00a0After a while touring was not interesting because of this attitude\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Strangely, Tiananmen Square was not crowed on the Saturday we were there but the Great Wall on the Friday was overwhelming\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>English access:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The guides were very good but the hotel and restaurant staff were <u>very poor<\/u>.. The hotel staff had trouble answering basic questions\u2026 On the boat the Cruise Director spoke good English \u2013 the others were basic to poor to none\u2026<\/li>\n<li>We can see that the vast percentage of tourists are Chinese people from within the country so their tourism machine is set up for them\u2026 Foreigners are just a small %&#8230; They need to improve their English if they want to attract more foreigners\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Money:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>US dollar still preferred\u2026 All pricing was in US$&#8230; \u00a0Some did not even recognize the Canadian Dollar\u2026<\/li>\n<li>The first hotel could not help to exchange money either at the desk or in their exchange machine (did not take Canadian money). They told me to go to the bank\u2026<\/li>\n<li>The Boat was ok\u2026<\/li>\n<li>I did use an ATM machine in a new shopping center with some trepidation but it looks like it was fine with no fraud so far\u2026 $5 service charge<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Credit Cards:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Not universally accepted\u2026<\/li>\n<li>The boat accepted my card on the first day but screwed it up on the last day\u2026 It cost me over 80 Chinese $ to call VISA to have it checked because the hotel did not know what a collect call was\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Recommend that people bring 2 credit cards for backup\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tips:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Very confusing\u2026<\/li>\n<li>The boat automatically charges everyone 150 Chinese\u00a0 on the last day but it does not cover everyone like the Cruise Director who helped us a lot\u2026 We gave him a separate tip as well as our table boy for great service\u2026<\/li>\n<li>The guides were generally ok but not clear if they keep it all or have to share it with the drivers and with the travel company\u2026 This needs to be clarified\u2026<\/li>\n<li>The lady who met us and arranged our transfer from the airport to the boat was not treated fairly\u2026 \u00a0She had to wait all day for the planes but there was bad weather so only our plane arrived (2 hours late)\u2026 No one was ready with any tip money for her\u2026 Hopefully there is a way the company can compensate her\u2026<\/li>\n<li>We had no tour Captain who know what to expect and could guide us on what we needed to do\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Other groups had a fulltime tour guide that helped them during the full tour\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0Boat:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Great service but not clean\u2026 Many people were concerned\u2026<\/li>\n<li>There was a concern that we were assigned the wrong boat\u2026 We were supposed to be on a upgraded boat but the one we got was not upgrade\u2026<\/li>\n<li>The staff however were very good\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hotels:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Generally speaking very nice, modern and clean\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Used the safe at each one but in the last one the safe was not bolted down so I was not 100% comfortable\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Poor English skills in all cases except the first hotel who had an employee on staff from South Africa there to assist foreigners\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tours Opinion:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Generally the arranged tours were good but we saw tooo much about their Emperors and Buda<\/li>\n<li>The tours of the older China sites \u00a0in Beijing and Shanghai were very nice\u2026<\/li>\n<li>We did buy some added tours which were worth the money\n<ul>\n<li>One was a tour of the gorge of the Yangtze that was beautiful<\/li>\n<li>A river cruise in Shanghai to see the old quarter<\/li>\n<li>Another was a tour of the Shanghai harbour at night to see the building lights \u2013 very worth it\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>After spending significant money to travel there, we should not be upsold by the guides\u2026 The tours should be all included upfront\u2026 Many people did not budget for those extra tours..<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Food and Water:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No one got sick\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Some people were buying cheap beer from the shore people while on the cruise and one said he felt funny but no serious illness\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Vita and I ate only at the planned restaurant stops and we drank and brushed our teeth with \u00a0only bottled water\u2026 We bought ice cream at 2 stops the bus made during some long trips \u2013 no issue\u2026<\/li>\n<li>Our Doctor proscribed us a number of medications in preparation for the trip\u2026 Other group members said they did not get anything special\u2026<\/li>\n<li>I found the food good but not special\u2026 To me it started to taste all the same after a while\u2026 The guides told us that they were taking us to special places but I did not see it\u2026\n<ul>\n<li>The boat food seemed to get worse in terms of variety as we came close to the end of the cruise\u2026 Only breakfast was interesting\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>AIR Travel:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Very good \u2013 nice modern planes (Boeing 777 and Airbus 3XX)<\/li>\n<li>On time except one flight delayed due to weather..<\/li>\n<li>We could not understand the English messages on the Air China flights\u2026 Good thing there was no emergency\u2026 They need to do better\u2026<\/li>\n<li>The trip home was a <strong><u>killer<\/u><\/strong> \u2013 30 hours of travel from Shanghai to Beijing, Vancouver and then Montreal\u2026 \u00a0There has to be a better solution\u2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Well I hope this helps\u2026<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Cordialement; Best regards&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Michael L, Montreal<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CHINA LAND &amp; RIVERBOAT TOUR TRAVELER REVIEW Hello, We are back \u2013 safe and sound\u2026 Overall opinion: Amazing country \u2013 worth seeing \u2013 growing fast ( not sure how long they will sustain that growth before running out of money) &#8211; lots of traffic \u2013 lots of people (especially at the tourist locations) \u2026 \u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5080,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[37,34,35,36,27,33],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grandescapades.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grandescapades.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grandescapades.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandescapades.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandescapades.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandescapades.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandescapades.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grandescapades.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandescapades.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grandescapades.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}