China Grand Tour Traveller Reviews

Thanks to the team at Eastravel for organising such a fantastic trip. It was informative, exhausting, fascinating, overwhelming, exciting and fun all at the same time. Pretty much what we were hoping for! Everything went to plan and was extremely well-organised. We particularly loved Pingyao, Guilin, Huangshan and Hangzhou. Our memories include: our introduction to Pingyao by mad golf cart ride; listening to Chinese music at night next to the lake in Guilin; walking on the inside of paths at Huangshan because we’re afraid of heights (until we weren’t); dumplings with chives for breakfast. The Yide Hotel in Pingyao and the Pig’s Inn in Xidi were perfect. It really felt we were in old China. The Ru Yi Boutique Hotel in Hangzhou showed the elegantly, modern side of China and had a fantastic restaurant. If we knew then what we know now, we would have dropped the visits to the Summer Palace, Forbidden City and Terracotta Warriors. This is entirely due to the sheer volume of other visitors.

Eastravel were extremely good. They helped tailored our holiday to our needs, found just the type of hotel we wanted and overall the trip went to plan and was well-organised.

Our trip to China was to be our retirement holiday of a lifetime so we wanted 2 – 3 weeks that would truly immerse us in the culture and history of the Country and its people. Planning started 18 months in advance but none of the brochures from the specialist companies offered quite what we wanted so we started to wonder if we could afford a bespoke service on our budget. We contacted Eastravel knowing that they specialise in Asia but not really believing that we could get a one to one tour for what we could afford. However, Dorothy Heng totally understood what we wanted to achieve and arranged the perfect experience for us. When we ‘discovered’ Zhangjiajie less than four months before we were due to fly and wanted to rearrange half of our tour, Dorothy took this in her stride, cancelling and rebooking hotels and all of the other arrangements. A tour guide met us at every location and each one spoke good to excellent English. We had a complete range of hotels, as requested, from a new five star hotel to a 200 year old charismatic, traditional hotel in the Beijing Hutongs with a rural, boutique hotel converted from traditional farm buildings on the way.

We cannot recommend Eastravel highly enough. We are a discerning couple who know what we want and Eastravel delivered this in spades. I would not hesitate to use their quality service again.