Originally Posted by
moondog
Yeah, it's a big deal. You were forced to sacrifice your hard earned vacation time to go places in which you had little or no interest. Furthermore, I'm willing to bet that you would have eaten far better if you played a role in restaurant selection.
Oh I'm sure we could have eaten a lot better if we'd had some help from someone local, but we didn't, and yet we thoroughly enjoyed our trip. Whether it's a "factory" tour or whatever, good times are where you find them, and they provided an opportunity to spend time with the others on our tour.
Had we paid a much-higher price for our tour I would have felt very differently, I'm sure. It was $879/person for three nights in Beijing, two nights in Xi'an and three night in Shanghai. Hotel accomodations were excellent in all locations. Food varied from very good to so-so, and it's likely my wife and I picked up an extremely-nasty 6-hour bug/food poisoning from one of the buffets in Xi'an. Would I have paid more to avoid getting sick? You bet! Haven't felt that bad maybe ever. But nobody else in our group got sick so who knows.