China Links Travel www.chinalinkstravel.co.uk Review

For most people a two week sightseeing tour of China will be a holiday of a lifetime, so it is critical to choose a reliable and efficient tour operator.



China Links Travel (www.chinalinkstravel.co.uk) may be a new operator in the UK but they supplied a wonderful and relaxing, well organised trip at a very reasonable cost. Both my wife and I found this post retirement holiday a wonderful self gift for a working life and fulfilled a lifelong dream.



Your trip can be enhanced if you are forewarned of some points we found useful to know. All the flights are fully ticket free and are totally electronically generated bookings; you will not get a ticket. Trust the system and just present your passport at each airport check-in desk. Your local Chinese guide will easily find you on arrival and take right through to the boarding point when transferring.



I would strongly recommend that you take a full photocopy set up all the key paperwork including your passports and particularly the flight arrangements and to keep these very safe until you return home.



Your long haul flight baggage allowance might be 30 kg, but they only permit a very strict 20 kg allowance for all the internal flights, so take care and attempt to keep your suitcase weight to below 18 kg if possible, giving yourself a little allowance for accidental overfilling. We took with us small luggage weighing scales. You can carry a lot of hand baggage which is useful when returning home with lots of presents as it was in our case. Don't forget the very strict rule carrying liquids in hand baggage which is easily forgotten on the internal flights and any liquid container over 100ml, flammable or explosive materials (which includes even very small aerosols) these will be confiscated as happened to us with expensive insect replant and sun cream.



All the hotels were first class; no problems with travel arrangements were experienced. Don't forget some loo paper -- all hotels and restaurants are fine, but outside they are stand-up loo's and no toilet paper so carry your own just in case!



There was a consistently high standard of local Chinese English speaking tour guides, who are all government licensed and very knowledgeable well educated and extremely polite people. They put in a lot of effort to meet all our needs both for historical interest and down to finding a loo in a hurry when caught short or finding a shop for that thing you forgot to pack. NB: If you like to wander off on your own, I strongly recommend that you always take down your current guide's mobile telephone number and hotel address/telephone number, as you will be in a country where very few people speak fluent English and it could be difficult and frightening if you do get lost in a busy and crowded place.



You may be advised that tips are not required and you will certainly never be asked for them by anybody. However the current practice throughout the country and with all the major tour operators equally, are that guides and appointed drivers will be relying on their tips to survive as for many of them this is their only source of income, they are not always paid a fixed wage. As a personal guide only, we decided to give each guide 100 Yuan per full day and 50 Yuan for less than one day and half that for the drivers. Talking to other British tourists we seemed to be giving the typical average.



I took a four outlet electric trip extension adapter to keep camera batteries and mobile phones topped up. Some hotels have normal UK square pin sockets or you will need to use the square pin to 2 parallel pin adapter bought from holiday shops.



We did drink the hotel tap water but it must always be boiled first. All the hotels supplied adequate free bottled water. If you like a cup of coffee in the bedroom, you will need to bring with you the small sachets of coffee/powdered milk is all the complimentary drinks are tea of all kinds. Neither of us had any tummy upsets.



You'd be wise to carry a lightweight pocket rain-mac and a small collapsible umbrella particularly if visiting during the rainy season. You would be wise to wear suitable footwear for the many steps and sometimes long walks.



Don't forget all the meals are Chinese using a rice bowl, so practice using chopsticks before you go and remember the soup is always drunk last. The meal was often presented in parts, so start eating when it arrives. There was always one free complementary free drink per meal including beer and soft drinks but not spirits. You knew when the meal had finished when the water melon arrived.



You will visit many and varied restaurants and try all sorts of new foods -- try it first and enjoy it -- before asking what it is, otherwise you might miss out something rather special.



You really will have a wonderful and enchanting time with many varied experiences just relax and go with the flow. Some of your days will be long with early and late starts. But if you have the stamina I would really recommend that you do try to get to some of the evening shows they really are wonderful and a relatively low cost.



I hope you have is a wonderful experience as we have had and I'm very pleased that we chose China Links Travel as our tour operator and feel confident to recommend them.