Xiamen Travel Reviews on Tripadvisor.com

The tour agency representative Wonder had helped to arrange for a family trip for 11 persons to Xiamen, Wuyishan and Fuzhou over 9 days that took place in late May/early June 2024. It was a very enjoyable 9 days and we stayed in hotels in good locations and the local guides were all friendly, helpful and knowledgeable. This was not the first time that Wonder had served my family. We had been to other parts of China with Wonder coordinating and making the tour arrangements. We had been to Huangshan, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Lijiang and Dali on 3 other occasions before this latest family trip. Every time, Wonder had made great arrangements and my family left China with fond memories, eager to return back to China soon to experience more and see more sights.

I found China Discovery on the Internet and I asked them for a customized private tour of multiple cities across China for 4 people (two retired couples). Wonder Wang was the travel consultant responded to me with a proposal which included Beijing, Xian, Chengdu, Guilin, Yangtze River Cruise, Zhangjiajie, Fenghuang Ancient City, Shanghai, Xiamen and Wuyishan. Wonder was very responsive to our questions and provided updates, made adjustments to our travel plan before and during our travel. He made all arrangements for hotels, inter-cities trains/flights, local (English speaking) tour guides, drivers and vehicles. We traveled with ease and enjoyed all the destinations. We were met by local tour guides at each destination train station/airport. They were all friendly and attentive to our needs. We appreciate their efforts, together with the drivers, to navigate through sometimes heavy traffics to bring us to all attractions as planned in the itinerary. Hotel accommodations were exceptional. Local lunches were tasty and in large portions.

I recently took a 7days Fujian trip with my siblings starting from Xiamen, Anxi and Yong’an with China Discovery arranged by tour operator Vivien Li.

Vivien did an excellent job arranging the tour guide, car and driver. She was very professional and responsive to all our inquiries and needs.

The entire itinerary was well planned.

The tour guide Michael Wen and driver Mr Chang were outstanding, very caring took care of my 88 year old elderly sister who has a heart condition and has to be in the wheelchair.

If there’s a future trip to China, I will not hesitate to contact Vivien Li.

Myself and 4other siblings, sister-in-law and niece went on a 7 day trip to Fujian. We are so fortunate to find Vivien Li from China Discovery who helps us arrange a visit to our ancestral village, Anxi where we visited an elementary school built by our grand uncle in 1937, suggested by my late father!

We totally enjoyed the memorable trip with our tour guide Michael Wen and driver, Mr.Zhang. They took good care of my elderly sister who is 88 yrs old and needed a wheelchair!

We see many scenic places in Xiamen, Anxi and YongAn!

The highlight of the tour was being welcomed by Anxi Penglai elementary school with the head principal, Mr. Chen and staff with school children welcoming us with flower bouquets!

Also visit to our ancestral home visiting our distant cousins and uncles and aunts whom we have never met!

We also enjoyed sumptuous lunch at Ji-An and at Yong-An on a farm!

There were six of us and the minivan is spacious and comfortable!

Vivien Li did a wonderful job to make sure our trip is pleasant and interesting!

We took a private tour with them to Kunming, Shangri-la and Lijiang then across the country to Xiamen and Quanzhou.

Travel consultant Wonder Wang was very fast to respond to all our queries. He planned a very good itinerary for us based on our budget and where we wanted to go.

The tour arrangements were very smooth and met all our requests. The itinerary was well planned and moved seamlessly through all the places we wanted to see. All the tour guides met us on arrival as scheduled, they spoke excellent English, and were very flexible to rearrange the tour schedule in accordance with the weather conditions. They also adapted to our mobility situation and assisted us with getting up and down steps, and in and out of the vehicles. The drivers drove safely, no speeding and on schedule for our connections to the next destination at the train stations and airports. Bottles of water were provided throughout the tour. Hotels were good, and the rooms were non-smoking rooms as we had requested. They were located conveniently close to restaurants so we could have our dinner at our own pace.

We would highly recommend China Discovery and certainly would travel with them again in the future. They took care of every detail, and we had a fantastic time without any stress or worry over travel arrangements.

The trip was very well arranged for our family of 3 members, with the places and activities we wanted. Rita kept in touch with us all the time, providing us with the name and contact information of the local guide, train tickets and hotel information.

We chose China Discovery to help us to discover the famous Tulou Houses near Xiamen / 2 days tour proposed.

Everything was very well organized, the selected guide was incredible (he understood perfectly our needs and took us out of very commercialised places), the accomodation was perfect.

I would definitely recommend China Discovery / Rita Jiang

We engaged China Discovery to organized our private tour to Xiamen and Wuyishan.

from planning to trip days, everything was great.

Vivien the person im in contact is very professional and detailed when emailing during planning period. the guides they engaged Cathy and Cherry are very professional, they made you feel taken care of. Do not underestimate the difference the tour guide can make, getting a good guide makes your whole trip enjoyable and worry free.

strongly recommend China Discovery if you are planning your China trip.

Again, kudos to Vivien, guide Cathy and guide Cherry.

My brother and I had a wonderful time with our private guides, Adam ( Xiamen) and Cherry ( Wuyishan). Vivien from China Discovery was excellent with her correspondences, very efficient and fast with meeting with our special requests. Highly recommended and I will surely use this tour agency again for my next China trips.

Nick Zhang is excellent Tour guide with excellent driver, Mr. Wang. Thanks to Nick that able to locate my grandparents' home in the village of Bandou, Xianyou.

Tulo was an excellent cultural visit and Xiamen was very much impressive city, clean and much developed since my last visit in 1996.

I recently completed a trip to Xiamen organized by China Discovery. I am based in Guangzhou. China Discovery assigned a travel consultant(Mr. Wonder) to me, who designed a tailor-made itinerary suiting my purposes. Mr. Wonder was fantastic, extremely responsive, kind, flexible, and quick, responding quickly to any question or request I had, and going beyond the call of duty to accommodate my needs.

I will plan all my future trips with China Discovery. I highly recommend China Discovery as a travel agency able to arrange your trip!

Mr. Wonder is a wonderful person. I am so impressed with him. Actually I planned a next tour with him for Xian--Harbin in new year and paid advance. But I had to cancel the tour because of increase in restriction. He refunded me all the money.

I've gone on two trips with China Discovery and both were wonderful. Each was customized for my preferences (as a history teacher) and both the guides and the drivers were perfect. There was a willingness to help clients eat well as well as the ability to adapt to challenging weather conditions and the challenge of being an American in China in these uncertain global times. I always felt taken care of and kept safe by Wendy and the company and when I next want adventure in China I will seek them out again. I cannot recommend them highly enough.

We always use China Discovery when we are exploring. Today in Xiamen was no exception. Driver / guide was excellent, friendly and very helpful. Looking forward to our next adventure.

The overall arrangements (rooms, meals, transportation, sightseeing etc) were excellent and a big thanks to Ms Riley considering my last minute request for a 2-days trip to Fujian (Xiamen). My personal tour guide (Nick) was exceptional and professional. Again Thanks for making this trip a memorable one.

Dear Jack,

My family and I had a wonderful time in China! You selected great hotels and food for us throughout our trip - thank you! My brother and sister in law were particularly impressed by the guides in both Xian and Xiamen. Sofy in Xiamen went out of her way to do some research into our family's last name to help us locate our village. While she couldn't find the actual village, she got us close enough.

Overall, the hotel quality was very good, and the food the best I'd eaten in China (its my 4th. trip.) and although Danny was sick once, we are not sure its the food as no one else got sick. The taste was just fantastic, especially in your home city of Chengdu!

Personally, I loved the Yangtze - what an amazing experience to be on that river! The local guide who took us on the "Green Goddess" tributary cruise, is a native from those mountains, so she was able to tell us about her family's life on the mountains. She even sang songs in her native language for us, which was wonderful!

I only have a couple of suggestions for improvement. For the tour in Xiamen, 1 day on Tulous is enough and a whole day should be allocated to Gulangyu. There were places in Gulangyu we would have loved to look at - for example the book store cafes, but we had no time at all. Secondly, it would be even better during long car rides (3 hours to Tulou), for the guide to give us more information about the areas we passed. She always answered our questions well, but it would be better if there was a plan.

Thank you for your good planning overall. We are impressed with China's progress and we will certainly be recommending both China and your company to our friends for their travels!

We requested for a three-city itinerary across Xiamen, Shantou and Wuyishan.

How China Discovery works is that you contract with them and they proceed to sub-contract with other tour guides in the various cities if they do not have a presence there. As such, a tour guide in the first city may not have clarity on what your itinerary might be for another city.

First up: the service from China Discovery.

1. Very prompt and responsive throughout, even during the trip itself. If you have WeChat I suggest getting the contact of the travel agent serving you, so that you may contact him/her during your trip in case you run into any difficulties.

2. Very pleasant and accommodating. I made several changes and Catherine (my travel agent) was quick to come back with a revised itinerary and quote. Not that I encourage being a difficult customer!

3. Special mention to Catherine for being contactable over WeChat all the way through my trip. It's exactly what I needed for peace of mind bringing my family of 9 around.

Secondly, the tour guides.

Xiamen: Tom Tang, although he was only in charge of shuttling us back and forth from the airport and hotel, we found our conversations with him to be incredibly informative. A man knowledgeable on Xiamen and Chinese culture and history. Excellent English.

Shantou: Xiao Qiang, great recommendations for food, very passionate about this category. According to him, many HKers come over from HK for gourmet trips - they see Shantou as a dining destination. We had amazing braised goose and a fantastic, affordable seafood dinner on the last night.

Wuyishan: Jack, very personable and eager to please. Pretty funny too and chatty. His family owns a tea plantation, so we joked that he should bring us some tea leaves. On the last day, he kindly gifted us with two boxes of tea leaves.

We tipped rather generously, approximately 700-900 for each guide (aside from Tom) for 2-3 days. But we had 9 people so we thought that amount was reasonable.

Would definitely recommend China Discovery for their service and quality tour guides.