9 days in China

China | Mar 18 - Mar 26, 2019

We were looking around for private tours that would tailor to our preferences for China and found Kimkim on the internet.
Our initial consultant was very attentive to all the communication and was happy to many small changes to the itinerary to suit our needs and budget. The process was smooth and saved us a lot.of time planning our own accommodation, ticket and transportation bookings etc...
The only issue we had was that we had a flight scheduled from Xian to Shanghai in which we had advised to have our seats booked sitting towards the front with window seat if possible. This was noted by the consultant but upon turning up to the airport with our private tour guide, we had found out that not only we didn't have our seats by the window, my husband and I were also seated in different rows which annoyingly we couldn't even change at the airport (was told they didn't have any available, despite the fact that we were one of the first to check in based on our tickets).
The private tour guides that we had in Beijing, Xian and Shanghai/Suzhou were all good and knowledgeable, with our tour guides Tom and Jessica for Beijing and Xian were standouts. We'd highly recommend private tours so you can skip most queues and have your own private vehicle to travel in. It was also super flexible and us being sick for the first couple of days, our tour guide and driver were more than happy to move things around for us.
The highlights for us were definitely the Great Wall of China, and since we arrived early in the morning as per your guides recommendation, there were barely a sight of tourists on the section we visited, so it was quite a nice experience as we got the wall to ourselves for almost half an hour. Another great highlight was the Terra Cotta warriors which were just surreal when we got there. Our tour guide had so much knowledge and she just knew almost everything about the history when we asked her questions!! We'd highly recommend Kimkim even though we had a small hiccup (which they apologised and did make up later on)! The private tours have many benefits and one of it also includes the great local food that our tour guides did not hesitate to recommend us, which often in big tours you don't really get.