Hangzhou - Heaven on Earth Day Trip from Shanghai

Great place!But the tour guide was rude and horrible! He should Be accomodating when we are asking questions.He's always in a hurry, he should understand that we are there to take some time to enjoy the scenery and take pictures. He should also volunteer on taking SOME of our pictures.worst tourguide

I enjoyed my day. I wish my tour guide was a little more informative at the sights on the history. He spoke a lot to the driver in Chinese all day. I had to ask a lot of questions rather than the guide offering information.

Note from Viator: Thank you for your review. We apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced during your tour. We have contacted the tour company and have addressed your concern about tour guide's service with them. Thank you for helping us ensure the quality of our tours.

It's ok, it gives you an idea of the city.

It was a good trip, however I wld have liked to spent more time in the Lake area-and the boat trip was pretty short. However the guide was helpful and I very much appreciated the effort she went to to have my jacket that I had left in the Restaurant returned to me. The driver for both our trips was exceptional-he managed to drive through peak traffic at a reasonable speed and somehow direct us through without any problems or feeling unsafe. He was great.

Guide and driver were friendly and helpful. It is a long day trip, two hours each way, and it would be good to add something else to the Hangzhou end to make the journey more worthwhile. The West Lake itself was lovely. The pagoda visit after lunch was a bit of a non-event. Lunch itself was inedible.

Hangzhou is a scenic location. We had a good time there. Unfortunately, the journey is a bit long from Shanghai (about 3 hrs). Our guide, Frankie, is a friendly person but he is still new in the job, I think. He didn't provide much commentaries about the location, the building, etc.

Beautiful place to visit. Recommend trip for the destiation. But; van smaller than on previous trips, older and somewhat dirty with mushy odour. A pity for a 2.5 travel time each way. Felt rushed when walking around, especially short time at the pictureqse fish lake area.

Beautiful gardens and the green tea village demo / tasting was interesting

It was a very long drive (heavy traffic) from Shanghai. I would have preferred to travel by train to Hangzhou and be collected from the station by bus and shown around. Hangzhou, the lake, the pagoda and tea fields are all interesting. If you can avoid the drive and catch a train, then visit this area.

A huge day with so much jammed in. We went unfortunately on a public holiday and got caught in traffic for hours. To see the traditional site of tea and to be educated in the fine arts of tea making was well worth the trip in the end though.

Hangzhou was beautiful but unfortunately for us it was raining on the day which spolit it. I would check the weather forecast before going because it can make a big difference to your experience. It is worth going but we spent a lot of the time driving there and back rather than spending time enjoying the scenery. The guide also cut short our tour because there was only two of us which I felt was unfair. We were also asked to pay extra to go up the Pagoda which is terrible because it should already be included.

I again would give this a 5 for the scenery and spots. However, me and my friend were unlucky enough to be stuck with Frank for this tour as well (read my Suzhou review). This time 2 other tourists joined us. Frank performed better on this day. Or more specifically, he treated the two other tourists better than us (preferential treatment based on age or race?!). He gave better descriptions and spoke more about history. I jokingly brought up how he did not talk that much about history on the previous day's tour. This ignited the fire. He started to ignore me and gave me a hard time for the next few hours. During the second half of the tour, he started to cool down to make sure I would rate him better on the survey. On the way back to the hotels, he handed me the survey. I already knew he was going to crack it open once I finished filling it out so I decided to not rate him so poorly (I wanted to voice my opinion on Viator instead). And of course, he did open it in front of everyone and read it before stuffing it in his bag! If I am ever to go back here, I would not join this tour again.

Note from Viator: Note from Viator: Thank you for your review. We apologize for any inconvenience and disappointment you may have experienced during your tour. We have contacted the tour company and have addressed your concern about guide's customer service with them. Thank you for helping us ensure the quality of our tours.

Insufficient time spent walking around lake, too much time spent at tea presentation. A long journey for what is on offer, but interesting.

I was hoping for a rural contrast to Shanghai (where I go for business frequently). However, Hangzhou is almost 10MM people and is just as urban as any other major metro in China.

After a 3 + hours drive out of Shanghai we finally made it to Hangzhou. the traffic was horrible in town that day, riding in a small minivan that had A/C but the driver didn't want to turn it on made it even worse. After our boat ride we went to eat..Ok meal, then we went to the tea house for green tea. We made one more stop but only had about 10 minutes to take pictures. then we piled into the van and rode back to Shanghai. It was very hot in the van even with the windows open. Everyone slept except me because i saw the driver start slapping his face and shaking his head trying to stay awake. I was so happy to return to my hotel! Perhaps you could charge people more money and take the high speed train as a group and have a driver meet the group in Hangzhou. This would eliminate so much time on the road.