Shanxi Travel Reviews on Tripadvisor.com

After 9 years in China, we're headed to Japan. A lot of life happened (including 3 kids growing up and graduating from HS) while we were here and we didn't make time to really see/experience China oWe used Wonder travel agent in Chengdu to set up our trip in September 2020 to Datong CN Shanxi.

Before the trip, the agent was extremely helpful replying to all our requests nearly instantaneously.

The trip itself was very well organized with a driver (Mr. Luoyang) and a guide (Ms. May) very helpful, always in time and very flexible to accommodate our request for photography.

In fact, we were so satisfied by the service that we are using again Wonder Chengdu for our next trip in October 2020.

The travel consultant Riley is amazing!! She gives all the useful tips and very considerate and efficient!. She made our trips cost effective and arranged the routes according to guests' needs. Highly recommend.

I decided that it was time to visit China again after the last trip to Yunnan Province. For anyone who has the experience of forming a trip from ground zero for a group with different arrival and departure dates, it is truly time consuming and difficult. I finally established the travel route, from Xian, Luoyang/Longmen Grottoes, Pingyao, Wutaishan, Yanmenguan, Hengshang Hanging Temple, Datong/Yungan Grottoes and exit via Beijing. All I relied on was Google Map (checking on location and distance), China's high speed train schedule for connection, Booking.com for hotel, skyscanner for flights and many different sites on the web for what to see. What I needed MOST was to find an expert in China to assess the viability of my holiday plan, offering new ideas and advice to shape my travel plans better. We also needed an English speaking guide, a vehicle, a driver, someone to book/issue our high speed train tickets, and other considerations relating to convenience, flexibility, safety, support, trust, cleanliness, friendliness, speed of response, visa application; and may I add, also a fair price without feeling being ripped off. Having emailed a few Chinese travel agencies, Leo Li from China Discovery reverted in a timely fashion, with clarity of good English, and a competitive quote. We soon started our engagement with emails to and fro. Needy travel companions were annoyingly making new demands and changes. Leo was so prompt and accommodating with multiple changes I made over the period of shaping and tightening my travel plans. I appreciated Leo's understanding and patience and the price revisions he kept making. The only anxiety I felt with Leo was when I had to send money over to China by Paypal to a different named person, without a formal offer and invoice. Despite Leo's explanation, I was worried but took a leap of faith this is China Discovery's work process. It turned out safe and sound, and Leo was quick to confirm the money transfer. Although I have never met Leo, my trust on him soon developed and I felt very comfortable relying on him and his expertise. When the trip started, we were provided with very reliable, friendly, experienced and most helpful and thoughtful guides. We were also impressed with the drivers who took such care on the road for our safety. We ended up having meals together most of the time. The guides recommended restaurants well. We avoided those standard tourist restaurants and went to where the locals would go. We enjoyed the food so very much, and China is not as cheap as before as my memory tells me. Well, one advice on booking hotels in China - use Ctrip.com (you get more options and better deals and can also book China's speed train of amazing network). When you are in Luoyang, make a day trip to explore the gorges around the area of Xiolangdi. When you are at Pingyao, include a day trip to Mianshang. We were there 14-28 Oct 2019, and we had mostly blue skies, autumn leaves and pleasantness around. I want to thank Leo for being such a reliable guy (leo@chinadiscovery.com) and a hickup-less trip! Bravo!

I am a history major and I went to China to study ancient Chinese history. The tour guides were very knowledgable and would always answer my questions. It was by far my favorite vacation. Visiting the grottoes, Buddhist temples, museums, ancient fortifications, and cities were the highlights of this history major's experience. My favorite experience was visiting Pingyao ancient city. The walls were first built during the Western Zhou dynasty and the buildings are mostly from ancient China. I stayed in a hotel inside the ancient city, ate the local food, bought traditional clothing, and went to the bar at night. There are many bars that stay open late and some of the locals dress in traditional clothing. It felt like living in ancient China! If you are interested in shopping, there is a gift shop near the terracotta warriors museum that shows you how they are made. You can buy pretty much anything there from a replica terracotta statue with your face on it to furniture, pottery, and replica weapons. I bought a replica sword for 960 RMB and they shipped it to my house. There is also a silk museum in Shanghai where you can buy beautiful clothing. The local people were always very friendly, polite and interested in talking with you. I never felt nervous or disrespected during my stay. The tour guides will go out of their way to ensure you enjoy your visit. I would highly recommend China Discovery for anyone who is interested in visiting China. It is much nicer to have a tour guide show you all the fascinating things to explore and explain Chinese culture and history than visiting China without a tour guide and being blind to all these things.

We have heard and seen alot about how amazing China is, so my partner and I decided on a 10 days vacation to China. It's our maiden voyage to China and we selected Beijing as our first destination to kick start our adventure..

It was a last minute decision with additional complication when we decided to include a meet up with friends who are residing in North East of China. Our hectic daily schedule meant that very little time were spent on researching our trip. Fortunately we found China Discovery who were able to provide personalised travel itineraries. Wendy Dan was assigned to assist us in planning our trip. Wendy has a patient of a saint and she is extremely helpful, professional and obviously dedicated to her job.

We appreciate the complexity involved in the trip as we were pretty ambitious with our travel plans and we were constantly tweaking our schedule. Wendy was always on hand to assist and offers suggestions to suit our challenging travel plans. Our constant tweaking were compacting the timeline for Wendy to organise our trip.

We finally decided on a 5 days self organised travel plan prior to engaging the service of China Discovery for a 5 days Beijing and Datong trip.

When we embarked on the trip organised by China Discovery, we were concerned that the schedule may be punishing since we were constantly on the road for 5 consecutive days prior to China Discovery trip. Our concerns were unfounded, we found the travel itineraries very relaxing, accommodating and well planned. All our requests and requirements were well taken care off. The accommodations and transportation arrangement were of excellent and much appreciated.

When researching tours of China we found that China Discovery was the perfect company to book with as we were able to customise our own trip.

We traveled to multiple destinations within China where we had our own personal guides which made the language barrier a breeze as we were able to thoroughly enjoy ourselves with no stress. The guides had excellent English and local knowledge and showed us many things that we would have otherwise missed.

I would not hesitate to recommend China Discovery and our tour coordinator Wing Zeng. She was excellent at planing the whole tour for us, including the internal travel arrangements. I was also very impressed with how she kept in contact with us throughout the entire trip.

When traveling domestically in China, we soon noticed that there were no signs in English at the airports so we were very grateful to have our tour guides assist us with the flight check-ins.

Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed our time in China and would definitely recommend this company to others.

My wife and I went on a week long tour of the Shanxi region (Datong-Wutaishan-Taiyun-Pingyao) with China Discovery, and booked our tour with the help of Leo Li. Leo was very prompt and responsive to my requests, and the tour far exceeded any expectations that I had.

It was a private tour, and I had only prior experience with group tours and didn't know what to expect. Our tour guide, May, was very knowledgeable, kind, and very open to answering all our questions. We were very impressed by the Yunguan Grottos, the Hanging Temple, and the ancient city of Pingyao.

Accommodations were great, for the most part near the center of activity and very comfortable 3 star-type places. The best part of the trip were the lunches - they weren't tourist packages. Instead May took us to nice restaurants and helped us craft meals to our liking. The food was fantastic!

The tour went at our pace, and left us plenty of time to explore cities during evening free time. There were no shopping stops, nor pressure to take optional tours as one might have experienced in China trips from other companies.

I would strongly recommend China Discovery, organizing with Leo Li, and if you are traveling to Shanxi, requesting May to be your guide.