Review of 1 Day Tour : Great Wall and Ming Tombs by Melissa

My mother and I had booked a group tour the night before the date we wanted to leave, and after receiving confirmation of our booking via telephone, we waited for our GROUP tour at 8am the next morning. We were very pleased to find out, as we were the only ones who booked the GROUP tour for that day (being end of November and extremely cold most likely), we instead had a PRIVATE tour for the price of the group one. Unfortunately, our tour guide ruined our excitement by repeating numerous times \"how lucky we are to get a private tour worth 1600RMB for only 160RMB\" and how she is \"losing money\". She explained it was a group tour requirement to bring us to 2 government-sponsored locations (i. to see the jade factory ii. to a ceramics factory) but at the end of the day when we finished seeing the Great Wall and Ming Tombs early, she insisted she also had to bring us to a Tea House. We soon realized she was dragging us to these locations to make small commissions off us, and we were not pleased! Exhausted and cold from the long day, even when we told her we didn\'t want to go, she kept insisting how she was \'losing money\'. All we could think was we would\'ve preferred not getting the private tour and China Tour telling us they couldn\'t accommodate our booking, than enduring a full day in a car with a lady who wouldn\'t stop talking about money. As a recommendation to China Tour: please ensure if you do take on a booking for less money than its worth, do NOT talk endlessly about how lucky we are, how kind you are, and how much money you are losing. This all takes AWAY from the \'kind act\' and leaves a general bad impression. That being said, on the plus sides, our tour guide spoke English well and was generally a nice woman. Also the lunch provided was by far too much for 2 people and gave us a great selection of foods we may not have tried otherwise. Downsides were that she wasn\'t adequately dressed for the harsh weather (extremely cold) and so we felt guilty dragging her to the Great Wall and let her stay in the car. When she toured us around the Ming Tombs we could see she was shivering and extremely cold, and this made us uncomfortable. Also, at the end of the trip she mentioned how our driver was very kind and we should give him a tip because this trip was LOSING MONEY. This is something a customer decides on their own, and we had in any case planned to give a tip, but requesting one puts a big tint on the gesture and had it not been for us getting a private tour over a group one, we would have most likely been dissuaded from giving any tip at all after she mentioned we should give one. All in all, the great wall is probably one of the most amazing sights I can recount from my trip to China, and no annoying chitter chatter about money could ruin that. So for USD24, this ultimately is a good deal. Just make sure you bring an MP3 player and soom noise-cancelling headphones... just in case ;)