Welcome to the Community!

If you put China into the search function at the top right of the page, you'll find loads of reviews and tips from fellow JYers who have done the tour previously including a very comprehensive one from Bob Gray who went a month before I did.

It's a very full on tour and a real cultural experience. Yes, you'll get to see lots of beautiful pandas at the Chengdu Panda Research Centre. They have around 60 Giant pandas (and red pandas) there at any given time and I hear that they've had a bumper batch of cubs this year (usually born in April/May), some of which you may be lucky to see in the nursery during your visit. The JY itinerary usually arrives at the centre in the morning when the pandas are having their breakfast and are most active. Sadly, I'm afraid you won't get the chance to do the 'Panda Keeper Experience' (1-on-1 panda hugging) which we were fortunate to do back in 2014. I believe that they had an outbreak of canine distemper and so stopped visitors getting so close to protect the health of the precious bears. But you'll still see many incredible things on this wonderful tour.

Happy to help if you have any other questions once you've had a chance to read some of the reviews.

All the best

Mandy

I have seen several references about the quality of the food and wondered if anyone recently had any views on it?

Did you buy a VPN before you went or could you access Whatsapp from the hotels- my children are keen to stay in touch to make sure I behave 😉

Huge thanks

Jo

This was my first long-haul holiday 10 years ago. Very full-on, but very worthwhile. Enjoyed so much, going again this August.

Apart from the obvious sites, itinerary is now much better, utilising the high speed trains which were not available. Also doing Yangtse River add-on which was not possible then.

One tip, book for all optional excursions as they are all very worth doing and will add to your enjoyment.

See you in August for an amazing holiday.

Hello Joco,

This was the first long haul holiday I did with JY and enjoyed it so much re-booked for August. Very full-on holiday, but so much to see. Itinerary has changed since I last went, apart from usual sites, with high-speed train enabling an even better timetable. As you can see from my earlier posts, apart from souveniers spent very little as virtually everything is included.

One tip: if you can book for all the optional excursions, there are all extremely worthwhile and not to be missed.

See you in August!

Hello Joco,

Hello Joco,

This was the first long haul holiday I did with JY and enjoyed it so much re-booked for August. Very full-on holiday, but so much to see. Itinerary has changed since I last went, apart from usual sites, with high-speed train enabling an even better timetable. As you can see from my earlier posts, apart from souveniers spent very little as virtually everything is included.

One tip: if you can book for all the optional excursions, there are all extremely worthwhile and not to be missed.

See you in August!

To answer your question about WhatsApp, I went last year & was unable to use Facebook, WhatsApp or Google. I don't know if there have been any changes since then, but if you really need to stay in contact I would get VPN. The search engine Bing did work for me there.

Regards

Barb