Asia Highlights

Support in-country, and especially with language barriers, was really helpful and important. Itineraries include pretty touristy stuff, but also things you don't want to miss! Kate was very kind and responsive - added a special touch when I had my birthday in Japan! Second time using KimKim and it is very useful.

First the positives:
1. Guides: Friendly, punctual, accommodating.
2. Vehicles: Clean and very comfortable (except in Kanazawa which had cigarette smoke).
Most interesting places/activities:
1. Miho Museum
2. Hiroshima - tear-jerker.
3. Ina
4. Mt Fuji panoramic ropeway
5. Bullet train rides (made better by travelling in Green Car).
Room for improvement:
1. Guides: Often difficult to understand (except Wesley). This was a major issue.
2. Hotel Higashiyama in Kyoto: Very small, uncomfortable esp. since we stayed there for 5 nights, probably equivalent to a 2/3 star hotel in USA. Would definitely not recommend it.
3. Ina: would have liked to spend more time there by getting there early. Advise visitors to carry own food and drinks as the few eating places there close early.
4. Explore purchasing tickets for cable car, Skytree, etc in advance, if possible, as it will save a lot of time.
5. Itinerary:
a. Share the final itinerary with ALL changes a few days before the tourist's departure.
b. Include addresses of hotels, train stations, etc in JAPANESE so that we can show these to the taxi driver. We ended up at the wrong hotel in Kyoto because the 2 hotels had identical names.

We were extremely happy with the planning / booking stage. We had lots of demands for what we wanted to cover and, for the most part, we got what we wanted.
In particular, my wife injured here foot a week before travel which significantly reduced her mobility. We had feared that we might have to cancel but Kate came through with organising additional private vehicles and guides plus access to a wheelchair. Without this, I am not sure we could have done the trip. We truly appreciate the effort to make these accomodations at such short notice.
Just a few minor quibbles which, to some extent, I think we should or could have addressed had we been more on the ball. We had wanted an authentic Ryokan experience with a traditional onsen . I think, on reflection, doing this in Kyoto was not the best option. We should have looked at Hakone for this. To some extent, we should have realised this ourselves.
The other issue is with the local guides. For the most part they were all pretty inexperienced or new. They we all very helpful. We had Mori in Tokyo. He was supper supportive to my wife, ensuring we could access the sites on the itinerary and make our trip smooth. He, however, was not that knowledgeable about the places we visited.
In Kyoto we had Dione. Again she was helpful but her anxiety towards looking after my wife often meant that she would apply an abundance of caution to various places on our itinerary. She would often start out say something wasn't possible until we had Googled it ourselves and pointed out that accessibility was possible. She had only been in Japan 2 years herself and so had little or no knowledge of the places we visited. In fact, in most cases it was her first time to visit a place too. In Osaka we had Naoki - he was more experienced than our other guides and knew many of the places we were visiting. Again, he was really helpful. In general, I think a guide should be familiar with the places on the itinerary and provide context and insight on those places and on the country, people, history etc. In time I am sure that all our guides will gain this experience but I am not sure I would really call all of them guides (except Naoki) yet.
All that said, we enjoyed our trip to Japan very much and would certainly recommend Kate to anyone planning a trip to Japan.

So we went to China. Here are some notes.
Take in an acrobatics show. Good call on Nina's part.
Do a tea ceremony.
Be aware that the main meal of the day in China is lunch so it might be later in the day. Eat a decent breakfast.
I get the feeling that they're taking the tourism seriously. Clean and safe.
Cycled round the wall in Xi an. Mark was quite right to go early early, too hot otherwise. Terracotta warriors was an absolute bun fight.
Personally I didn't see the point in going around the harbour in Hong Kong to see a boat the had sunk ages ago. However my daughter loved it.
Chengdu for the panda's. Again take the guides advice and walk up because you miss part of the zoo otherwise.
Guilin for the rice fields. Lime mountains cruise very cool. Underground cave! Only saw one black snake walking down from the rice fields. The water show in Yangshou is not worth the money. Also Chinese people talk during a show, eat, join in etc. Part of learning the culture!
Trains were cool! These people are efficient, things are pretty much on time, so don't dither. Queues move so they're not a problem.
Daughter knew a bit of Mandarin which was super helpful. I don't think you could do a trip like this without guides to be honest. Local people were onto it though, they had Google translate loaded, as did I.
Just occurred to me now that we didn't go and see anything about porcelain.
Ladies take tissues with you. I got used to the hole in the floor type toilet. Glad my legs are still strong.
Kris in Shanghai did some great problem solving when we threw some extra activities at him, namely shopping! Barter hard people (not in stores with price tags).

Our trip to Japan included many items and logistics which were managed by Kate. Overall, my family, who were first time visitors to Japan, were excited and felt like they got to see the major sites in each city. For me, a return traveler to Japan, it felt like a series of generic tours to the major tourist attractions which could have been hired individually through other services (Viator, etc). Personally, I was hoping for more unique experiences but I did appreciate that fact that KimKim was a 'one stop shop' for the logistics (cars, tickets, etc).

In terms of tour guides, our first guide, Peter Wong (Yoon) in Tokyo, was not a proficient English speaker. It turned out that our driver (who was excellent!!!) was a better English speaker than Peter. Hence, we did not receive very much information about the tours and the sites we were visiting. We spent most of the time googling the background information at each location. Peter is Malaysian (not Japanese) so a number of local questions we asked had him googling as well. When we first started, Peter did not have the agenda we were sent from KimKim so we had a bit of a disconnect on expectations for each day. He finally took a screen shot of the pages I received to align the agendas between what he had and what we were expecting. For the most part, everything logistically went well but we had one or two instances were the tickets were not accepted or procured. In the end, it worked out.

During our time in Tokyo, I booked the fish market auction separate than KimKim since the auction was not able to be organized by KimKim in the schedule (according to Kate). This event was a highlight of the trip. We hired a guide for this morning through the hotel and had a amazing experience since she was very knowledgable about Japanese history/architecture/politics/etc. In addition, as we were interacting with others, we would ask her questions and she would ask the host and then report back to us the responses. Our KimKim hosts (Peter and Naoki) did not behave like this and would just google to respond or listen to the Japanese response and then not revert back to us. We learned more from this lady about Tokyo in 4 hours than we did from Peter for the 5 days we had him scheduled.

As a side note, the KimKim agenda indicated we would be touring from 9am to ~5-6 pm each day (8 hours). This schedule was only true for some of the days. I highly recommend to KimKim to inform tour participants on expectations start and stop times to allow for meals and meal times. Since dinners were not included in the tour agenda, I worked off-line to book a variety of dinners and/or spa appointments in each city only to be told that we would not be back to the hotel in time or that we might need to skip something to fit the dinner schedule. In addition, on many days, lunch was not until 2 pm or later which also would have been good to know since we were having breakfast at 7-8 am and dinner at ~7 pm. If I had known this up front, it would have saved a lot of re-planning between myself and the tour guides and we could have brought snacks on the tours.

In Kyoto and Osaka, we had Naoki as a tour guide. Naoki was more engaging than Peter at a personal level and he had a better command of the English language. Unfortunately, Naoki is also more of a 'host' than a 'guide' and his college major was hospitality. For some of the places we visited, Naoki indicated he had not been to them prior to taking us to the see them so he was learning about them just as we were. When we visited the Palace in Osaka, he did not pre-book tickets (in fact, he told me he could not) so we spent time standing in line in the rain while others went through the 'fast track' to the entrance. I finally looked on-line and realized I could have booked them while standing in line to save time. These are all items that I would have thought they would have checked prior to our arrival.

For both guides, there were points when there were Japanese explanations of things we were seeing or touring instructions (no photos, etc) from the hosts at the sites and neither guide translated the information to us. We spent a lot of time trying to understand what was going on and what was next.

When we arrived in Okinawa, our driver was not at the airport arrivals. I called the number for Kate to check on the driver and no one picked up. There were two other numbers on the itinerary so I called the second number and got a voice mail which was responded to about an hour later. Finally, the person at the third number picked up the phone and asked why I was calling her (indicating we were bothering her.....not in a helpful way). I explained what was going on and she said Kate needed to help me so she transferred me to Kate who was sitting at the desk next to her. This was very frustrating that it took 3 international calls to locate someone and that Kate was at her desk while I was calling other travel agents in her system who were not aware they were on my agenda as a help desk person.

In total contrast, Wendy, our host in Taipei, was outstanding. She was well prepared and well educated. She explained each day in detail and worked with us to understand what we were seeing and why it was important (context). She was also very good at engaging my son. If there were any suggestions or updates to the agenda, she had us sign professional 'change orders' which we appreciated. Wendy was the type of tour guide that we anticipated for the entire trip. In addition, Wendy took a number of photos of us which was very helpful as we toured each location. We cant say enough about how much we learned from Wendy and enjoyed her tour. We wished we had her for the entire time.