The tour we went on was Kuoni's “China Highlights” tour. It was one of their Classic Escorted tours. These differ from Kuoni's normal escorted tours in that the tour group is accompanied by a native English speaking tour manager throughout the tour (including the in and outbound long-haul flights!) as well as having local guide(s) during the tour. This was the first Kuoni Classic Escorted tour that we had been on and we were very impressed by it even though it was the most exhausting holiday that we had ever been on. It took quite a while to recover from it!

The tour was just over 2 weeks long. It was all-inclusive and visited many of the major tourist attractions in China. There were 22 people in our tour group including our Tour Manager and a special guest appearance by Lina's Mum, who wanted to accompany us on this tour because, although she was born in China, she had never seen its tourist attractions.

(Click on any of the pictures to view a full sized version)

The tour was very intensive and we were given very little free time to unwind and reflect upon the wealth of things we saw each day and consequently our memory of the whole experience is a little flaky: We had to read our diaries, watch the 2¼ hour video and look through the 368 photographs that we took in order to prepare for this trip report. You can see just how busy we were by clicking here to view our packed itinerary. We have also shown our route on this map of China.

Most of the days were jam packed full with sightseeing - even the days when we were travelling between locations (which seemed to be most days!) There was even some entertainment provided in the evenings on some days. Overall, it was all very well organised by Theresa, our Tour Manager, who was greatly assisted by local guides in each city. We had been warned to expect many disruptions such as flight changes and overbooking etc. but everything actually ran like clockwork.

Just about everything seemed to be done for us - all we had to do was stick to the fairly generous schedules whenever we were allowed to wander around by ourselves:

• We were checked in to each hotel (this may not sound like much but, in China, there actually was some paperwork involved which was all filled in by our Tour Manager on our behalf after we had been given our keys). The hotels were all extremely luxurious but we didn't get to spend much time in any of them!

• The tour was mostly full board and all of the meals that were included were completely arranged for us.

• We hardly had any contact with our luggage between hotels. It was collected from our room before departure and we often didn't see it again until we arrived at the next hotel when it was sometimes waiting for us in our new room

• The transport between cities was, of course, handled for us but our Tour Manager took it one step further and did absolutely everything: we never saw any of the tickets or even the airport check-in desks and, most importantly, avoided all of the bureaucracy that was almost certainly involved.

• An alarm call was arranged for us each day. Unfortunately these were always far too early for whatever departure time had been arranged but they were almost impossible to cancel. We usually unplugged our phone so that we could get a little extra sleep but this sometimes led to the hotel sending someone around to our room to knock on the door. We had to get up early every day - usually around 7am and once as early as 5:30am (8am was considered to be a lie-in!).

• We were taken, by coach, to each of the tourist attractions where any admission charges were paid for us. We were always accompanied by a local guide who showed us around and provided us with plenty of background information on the place before allowing us some time to wander around by ourselves. These guides also accompanied us during the coach rides to and from the attractions and, during these journeys, they would invariably provide us with some personal insight into the Chinese way of life. In a country where free speech is most certainly not a way of life, these guides were often surprisingly candid with us during these journeys. One of them even told us that he wouldn't dream of saying some of the things he was telling us if he was outside of the coach for fear of being overheard by plain-clothes police.

• We were even told when to go to the toilet! This was because, apart from in the hotels, the toilets in China generally left a lot to be desired and so whenever we were near a toilet of an acceptable standard (which Theresa, our Tour Manager, seemed to be an expert on) we were advised to use it!