Location: China
Who with: my teenage son
Date of travel: September 2018Why?
My Dad is an ABC (Australian Born Chinese) and I have long wanted to take my son on a trip to China. Travelling to China myself in the late 80s gave me an insight into my heritage and a sense of gratitude that my grandparents had the good sense to immigrate to Australia. I hoped that my son might get a similar feel for where his ancestors had come from, but now that China has embraced capitalism, the contrast is not so stark as it was when I visited 30 years ago.
How?
Master 15 and I joined the Intrepid Travel China Family Tour in September 2018 for a 14 Day tour starting in Beijing and finishing in Hong Kong.
I love a small group guided tour, having done a Peregrine Adventures tour to Vietnam back in 1997. My work life as an EA is spent organising people, diaries, and events to the nth degree, so it's nice to have someone else do the organising while I do the relaxing. While I had done some comparative research about tours, I did not want to research the locations too much on purpose - I wanted to leave some things open to a sense of surprise and curiosity. The tour was really well paced, with just the right amount of guiding and plenty of opportunities to strike out on our own.
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| Great Wall of China at Mutianyu |
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| Nanluoguxiang, Dongcheng District, Beijing |
Reasons We Chose This Trip
The big ticket places we wanted to see were included: the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Army, and the Panda Research Centre - especially the pandas! The bonus extras were the evening performances of acrobatics, kung fu, Szechuan opera, cooking class, bike rides, overnight sleeper train journey, and of course the amazing food.
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| Cycling the city wall at Xi'an |
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| A cot full of baby pandas at Chengdu |
Highlights
The visit to the Panda Research Centre was much anticipated, and I didn't want to leave. The Giant Pandas and the lovely bamboo gardens were beautiful, but the Red Pandas were the "unexpected stars of the show".
I had been looking forward to the Terracotta Army at Xi'an, but the early morning bicycle ride around the ancient City Walls and the amazing street food were a wonderful surprise.
Yangshuo was also a highlight. The Golden Week party atmosphere in West Street each evening was fabulous and the slightly less busy rural setting was a pleasant change after the urban centres.
Hong Kong is one of my favourite places on earth - the hustle and bustle, the food, the girls walking arm in arm, the food, the Star Ferry, and that view from The Peak. We weren't in the mood for shopping so we took the Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car to Lantau Island, avoided the tourist trap shops, and wandered past the foot of the Big Buddha to the Wisdom Path, which was much less crowded.
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| Cooking class at Yangshuo |
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| Spectacular scenery on the Li River at Yangshuo |
Some personal highlights
Watching my son as he flexed his wings while we travelled and stepping up when I felt myself getting flustered. We had arrived in Beijing two days before our tour began and I had booked a foodies walking tour of the hutongs for our first day. While waiting in our hotel reception to meet our guide, Master 15 looked over my shoulder at the printed ticket and noticed I had booked for September 2019, not September 2018. We rang the tour company and it turned out they had noticed the date the day before and had tried to ring our hotel to confirm if were were in fact staying the next day and not the next year. The hotel would not confirm (the correct thing to do, but nevertheless frustrating), so they did not send a guide to meet us. We tried to arrange another time, but it just wasn't going to work out. I was ready to have a little cry and retreat to our hotel room (I'll blame jet lag and menopause), but Master 15 encouraged me to strike out and we went in search of a t-shirt shop we'd previously found online.
We ended up having a fantastic day wandering around in search of t-shirts, mango drinks, and music shops. We even managed to find our way back to our hotel after I lost our map...
Master 15 had his 16th birthday the day we visited the Great Wall, which was a fabulous way to mark the day, along with the delicious cake our guide produced at dinner that night.
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| View from The Peak - Hong Kong |
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| Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car - get a Crystal Cabin |
Would I recommend this tour for travel with a teenager?
Absolutely. The locations of our accommodation meant Master 16 felt comfortable going off to explore on his own
We were blessed with our travel companions - a family of four from Queensland and another family of four from New Zealand - we all got along famously. A great mix of activities combined with daily down time meant everyone was relaxed, well-rested and, for the most part, happy. Our tour guide, William, made sure we were all well taken care of.
The greatest gain from this trip with Master 16 was (yes this is going to sound cliched) the mother/son bonding time we had. Being on the tour took away the roles of "I'm the mother so I'm in charge and you're the kid so I'm in charge" and put us on an equal footing. In only a couple of years' time he will fly the family coop, so I feel greatly blessed to have had the opportunity for this time of exploring outside our comfort zones together and creating some wonderful memories and "in" jokes.
Now we just have to book our flights for our foodie tour in September 2019!
