As I’m writing this I’m sitting in an internet room at our hotel in St. Petersburg, Russia. It’s hard not to compare all the countries, but a few notes about our experiences in China and Vietnam. First of all, my expectations (some of which I think others in the group shared)were that the people in South Vietnam would be friendly and like Americans and the people in North Vietnam would be less friendly and maybe even hostile and not like Americans. I also expected some people in the South to speak English, but few people in the North. I thought the North would be far behind in development. The truth was that the people of both South and North Vietnam were very friendly, many spoke English, the school kids never hesitated to speak to us in English, we didn’t notice any hostility in the North, although the propaganda machine is still alive and well. Both the South and the North are very interested in tourism and therefore strive to make tourists comfortable and to like their country. They always, without fail, had us fill out evaluations for our hotels, for the sites and for the guides, and believe me the guides take that very seriously! South Vietnam seemed to me to be a little ahead in terms of social development, but there wasn’t a great deal of difference. I also had expectations about the hotels, thinking that our hotels would not be all that great, but hoping they would be clean. What we found was that all but one of our hotels were beautiful and exceptionally clean. Throughout – our experience far exceeded our expectations and I would never hesitate to recommend Vietnam as a travel destination and also our tour operator – Exotissimo as a tour company.
In China, our tour company was China Highlights. We again were pleased with every aspect of our travel. The hotels were beautiful, service oriented, and clean. Our tour company provided more meals than the one in Vietnam, but sometimes this meant that we ended up eating far too much. The meals in China are large, many selections of different foods at each meal. We did enjoy it immensely even though the portions could have been cut in half. In China I expected friendly, enthusiastic people and they did not prove us wrong. Again, our tour company had an evaluation for us to fill out every time we moved from one location to another and again the guides were very concerned with what would be put on the evaluation. The evaluations covered the hotels, meals, restaurants, tour guide, driver, vehicle and whether you did any shopping at the recommendation of the guide. In one case we had asked the guide to take us to a pearl factory. On the evaluation, I put that we asked her to take us to the pearl factory and how much we had enjoyed and appreciated it. She brought the evaluation back to me and wanted me to add that we directed her to take us. Anyway, I adjusted the language. She said there are lots of people that would love to have her job and that all tour guides are very sensitive to everything on the evaluations. As it is, our tour guides, drivers, vehicles, & restaurants got the highest ratings. The hotels sometimes got a mark down – not much hot water in one case and no water pressure in another. If that’s all that’s wrong – it’s not much.
Again, our tour company – China Highlights was excellent and they really want to make sure tourists are well taken care of and enjoy China.
I’m getting ready to add our Russian experiences and then will reflect on Russia at a later time.