Reviews

A perfect way to be introduced to the customs, food, scenery and history of Japan. It gives a springboard for a future visit and having a group that blended UK, Australia and New Zealand tourists worked well.

A well organised tour with a knowledgeable guide with a wide variety activities and accommodation . Meals were well organised reflecting both local and international cuisine Size of group was 12 and was an ideal mix of couples and singles from UK,NZ and Australia .

This was a very enjoyable and interesting holiday. However, a little more free time would have been good and I found it a much more demanding trip than I had anticipated. I discovered that the activity level advertised was greater for clients booking in Australia than for those of us booking in the UK.

We were on the Majestic Yangtze tour with Wendy Wu Tours for 14 days in mid-September 2026 and what a trip it was!

All the way from Shanghai to Beijing and so much in-between from a night cruise in Shanghai to such "wonders of the world" as the Terracotta Warriors and Great Wall of China, the cities of Chengdu and Xian as we flew through China's vast countryside on bullet trains and sat in awe of how much and how fast this vast country has changed in the last thirty years. Cities of twenty million or more, sky high apartment buildings adorning every city skyline and hotels as classy as any western ones with the latest technology from robot room service to AI loos with handsets to warm them up or flush everything away. All top class- apart from one or two issues flights with Turkish Airlines and stopovers in Instanbul.



The real highlights however weren't the vast distances we travelled but the people we travelled them with-our multinational group from the UK, Australia and USA-and the entertainment we enjoyed on our gorgeous four night cruise on the Yangtze River sailing through the Three Gorges Dam with the staff providing the evening entertainment and even the Captain joining in, the tours of silk and jade factories, the Forbidden City & the gorgeous Sacred Garden by day and Xian's medieval City Walls lit up by night as well as delicious Chinese food every day served on our "Lazy Susan for all to share. We got a full-on taste of China, its rich medieval heritage and its people today not as we might portray them from western media but as a people as welcoming and friendly as anywhere else and apart from Tinnaman Square free to say-often in English and always very respectfully- what life is like in China today.



It was everything we hoped for -and more. But the Star of our Tour undoubtedly was our main guide Gary (all Chinese guides it appears have an English name) who not only kept us all on time and in line with phrases such as "Gary's Family", "Follow the flag", Sticky Rice (keep together) and "One Dollar" (someone is missing)/ "Two Dollar" (everyone's here) but with his "Chinglish", his inexhaustible good humour (at least one joke a day) and his genuine concern for and attention to detail with all 23 of us. This was more than a 'personal touch' or company training. This was Gary, knowledgeable, caring,funny and always smiling; one, if not, the best tour guide we have ever had and a huge compliment to Wendy Wu who it seems sets the standard as all the guides we met seem to know her personally. Gary and Wendy Wu made our tour of China both special and memorable and for that my wife and I are extremely grateful.

This is the sixth trip I booked with Wendywu. First reason being they take care of everything and for an " older" person, it means stress free travel. Secondly, the tour guides of Wendywu are all first class . They are knowledgeable and kind and friendly. I have travelled solo and have travelled with a friend from Australia whom I met on a holiday to China.( Wendywu has an Australian office, our arrangements matched beautifully. ) Thank you Wendywu tours.

Great itinerary, great service from Wendy Wu staff in Australia and a wonderful guide in Japan (Mariko Hirata).

The tour was full-on but delivered on everything I was thinking of. Accommodation was great, destinations and activities were excellent. The daily organisation also managed to avoid heavy tourist numbers at a number of sites and that was much appreciated.

Happy to travel again to Japan and with Wendy Wu, am already planning the next trip.

This holiday is a wonderful introduction to the Japanese culture, way of life, food, architecture and religions. Although tiring, mainly due to the humidity and travelling on everyday, we saw and learned so much. Our guide Mariko was wonderful and nothing was too much trouble for her. Our group of 20 people from UK, Ireland, Australia and NZ were friendly and helpful. Everything was very well organised almost to the minute. Fantastic introduction to everything Japan has to offer. Thank you

A fantastic holiday.
A great group of people on the tour, from the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
South Korea is beautiful !
Our tour guide Lena was amazing, kept us all together on our schedule.
Robert the driver, kept us safe and comfortable on our journey around South Korea.
We got to see so much , well worth the money. A trip of a lifetime!

A very enjoyable holiday that took in the major attractions in Japan. There was a full programme of visits and activities and we especially enjoyed Kyoto, Tokyo and Himeji Castle. The food was enjoyable, especially the Authentic Japanese cuisine. There is never too much free time on these tours, but we would have appreciated a bit more free time to shop or explore independently.
Add on days at the beginning in Tokyo and at the end in Osaka to get the most out of your trip.
Great bunch of fellow travellers with the majority from Australia and New Zealand. Our guide was excellent and kept us organised.

We saw everything that was interesting about Vietnam. We were fortunate to have been assigned a top notch experienced tour guide, Laky, who looked after us all (28 of us!) in an unflappable way with no fuss or bother. One of the best tour guides I have travelled with. A beautiful, warm, amazing country and as a first time visitor, I was over the moon with how lovely, smiley and friendly the Vietnamese people are generally. I loved every minute with tourists from Australia and New Zealand.

An excellent tour taking in all the main sights of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Excellent National Guides and good travelling companions - only 5 of us from the UK and the remaining 17 mostly from Australia but some from New Zealand. We all got on very well together. All meals were included and the idea of paying the 100 US dollars at the introductory meeting was great.

Wendy Wu Discover Japan tour was interesting and it was good that all meals were found so we didn’t have to hunt for good restaurants. Food was very good and more than plentiful. Sometimes eating in the hotels where we stayed and sometimes our guide walked with us to nearby restaurants. The days were quite full on and the coach travel a bit difficult as seats were small and my (tall) husband struggled to get his knees into the seat space. It would have been better to travel a bit more by train. Our guide was knowledgeable about historical Japan and the many shrines and temples we visited. We did ask her for some more up to date information about how the Japanese live now as we felt this would have been more interesting and we got very little on this side of things. Our tour group was mixed with people from the UK, Australia and New Zealand which gave a great atmosphere and everyone got on really well. Hotels were mostly very good, modern style. One was down a side street so we had to trundle our cases uphill which was a challenge for some and we helped each other. We did some crafts like paper making and decorating chopsticks with gold leaf. Watched a tea ceremony, did some sake tasting and some origami. These were good activities making a change from touring round temples. The transfers were odd as on arrival in Tokyo we were taken by taxi to the hotel. On leaving Osaka we were taken by taxi to a bus stop then waited 90 minutes for a bus to the airport. We would have preferred to return to Tokyo for the last night then flown straight back rather than going from Osaka to Tokyo and then flying home - it made a very long day coming home.Overall we enjoyed the tour but found that admin from Wendy Wu was poor. We got different answers to questions we asked, sometimes no reply to emails with requests regarding transfers etc. We had to write many emails to get flight options to upgrade to premium economy. For this reason we would not book another tour with Wendy Wu as touring should come with reassurance to things we need to know before travelling without so much hard work on our side to gain information.

The trip covered many of the popular tourist sights in Japan, but also some different places and experiences that I don't think we would have found on our own. Our guide (Meyouke) was fantastic and kept our group in order - especially getting quickly on and off the bullet train. Our group were a mixture of people from UK, New Zealand and Australia and were a fantastic friendly group which made the trip even more enjoyable.

We returned on 7th November from a 28 day Wendy Wu Grand Tour of India. Wow what an amazing time and to visit so many places it seemed impossible. We knew from the itinerary that it would be a busy/intense holiday with internal flights and some long days, but despite the huge list on the day to day listings we got to see everything and more. Every box was ticked and although tired some days, extremely happy and satisfied.

We were a party of 19 and all except my wife and I were from either N Z or Australia and as they were of a similar age, (retired but not OLD) we had a fun time and our bus often rocked with laughter. None of the exceptional tour would have run so smoothly if it hadn’t been for our tour manager MK Jain who was brilliant, and we often wondered if he ever slept. He organized all luggage, checking in to hotels and airports and any hotel complaints. Any little problems he ironed out (delayed flights/traffic problems all beyond his control) and so the holiday was seamless as far as we were concerned from our day of arrival, until he left us 3 weeks later at Mumbai airport. At the other end we had our final tour manager AJ but not a parch on MK whom we sadly missed.

There are many forms of transport to be taken over the holiday scary rickshaws and even more frightening tuk tuk journeys all add to the excitement. It is the fact that you are crammed into the vehicles and mixing with fast, noisy and very close traffic. We had some very early mornings to see the sunrise, evening dashes to see the best sunsets, such great photo opportunities. We saw so many towns and cities, palaces and forts, and so it is hard to come down to which were the highlights of the whole holiday. But high on the list has to be the visit to Varanasi (seeing the sunrise over the Ganges), The Jain temples of Khajuraho (amazing), the Taj Mahal at sunrise and the Thar Desert (on a camel) at sunset. Not forgetting the caves at Ajanta and Ellora, and the wonderful city of Jaipur. I could add many more places to this.

Accommodation was varied (we stayed in 16 different places) and ranged from very good to excellent when on 2 separate nights we stayed in Heritage sites and were in a palace, and then a 500 year old fort, totally amazing! The food was always good, mostly buffet style and although almost always curries of one type or another for lunch and evening, as the regions changed so did the heat and style of the food so it never became boring.

We had (mostly) excellent local guides as well at our destinations and these helped to put into perspective the time scales of artefacts and sights we were visiting and hopefully we absorbed some if not all of the information. The exception was at Ranthambore where our guide morning and afternoon seemed to be uninterested in us as a group or even giving any information about any other animals we may/or may not see. We weren’t expecting to get even a glimpse of a tiger, and all we saw were recent paw prints. But we seemed to spend a lot of time sitting and listening with no commentary from the guide (who spent most of his time looking at his smartphone) which became a bit boring.

Our tour manager MK also encouraged us when possible to go out and meet the local people and mingle and we tried to do this often – it is the only way to get to know what a wonderful vast colourful country India is. We clearly only saw a small fraction but I believe it did give us over the 4 weeks a true flavour of this wonderful country.

A slight downside was the latter part of the holiday, in Kerala. Our accommodation in Kochin (Casino Hotel) was poor compared to previous weeks very run down with a restaurant poorer than a transport café. Our night on the kettuvallam was so disappointing. Our group was split into 5 crafts, 4 of these larger, with modern and better facilities. Ours was an old craft, lacking modern facilities (and even water for some of the trip!) Four of us had an uncomfortable night with the only boat not having mosquito screens. The captain and cook spoke virtually no English, we had no idea where we had to go when we stopped, the food was poor and cold, including a dish of chicken which we dared not eat. It is a shame that we were not all treated equally and those that experienced the better standard boats had an enjoyable time.

The last hotel in Kovalam was indeed in a lovely setting right on the Indian Ocean, and the bedrooms were excellent, with large rooms and a balcony and air con. But the public spaces and dining areas were open, hot, noisy and had no air con, a very unpleasant and uncomfortable dining experience. We were taken to another hotel on the last evening for a meal and that was a disaster. We were on a higher floor with no air con, high humidity and a widescreen TV on throughout the meal. Water provided at the table was warm, as were the soft drinks ordered and subsequently sent back. Even our tour manager apologised and said it was unacceptable. I cannot understand how any Wendy Wu representative had sanctioned this as a suitable venue.

The holiday was very good value for money with all the transport, accommodation, expert guides and entrance fees included. You get to see a lot of India in a fairly short time, and there is not a lot of relaxation time, but that I had expected. Go prepared for that, and some long days and come back with a much better understanding of India. Thank you Wendy Wu we had a ball.

Most of the trip deserved a 5+ star rating and 2 of the hotels (heritage sites) were off the scale for luxury, but the poor experiences and accommodation in the last few days (as detailed above) dragged the rating down. I was also disappointed that the package accommodation ended 14 hours before our pickup time at 1.00am on the Thursday of our return. I cannot understand why Wendy Wu demanded £140 for a room for the last afternoon and evening prior to leaving for the airport when booking direct online cost us just over £80, just a bit of a niggle as virtually everything in our 28 day tour was included. We will certainly travel again with Wendy Wu.



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Organisation was excellent from booking to return home. Lots of useful information provided about our destinations.
We had eight flights (international and domestic), all without any problems.
Coaches were of good quality and comfortable with air conditioning and adequate amounts of chilled bottled water were provided.
Hotels were of a high standard, beds were comfortable and breakfasts provided a wide variety of options, both European and Asian.
The Light Hotel in Hanoi was a little below the other hotels in terms of communal facilities (pool, bar area) but benefited from a good location in the city.
The itinerary was as described in the tour information with a few elements of rescheduling to meet flight times. Days were very full with early starts and some late finishes. Activities and places visited were varied and kept the party interested and entertained.
Our guides spoke good English and provided a wealth of information.They kept us up-to-date with any changes to the itinerary and gave constant reminders of where we needed to be, at what time and what we needed to bring (mainly sun-cream and mosquito spray, although mosquito's were never a problem).
We felt our guide in Vietnam (Laki) exceeded our expectations and we were sad to say good-bye to him.
We were in a group of 24 people from UK, Australia and New Zealand. Ages ranged from 50's to 80's but all were able bodied, young at heart, and there to enjoy the experience.
To conclude, we would have no hesitation in booking another Wendy Wu tour and thought it was very good value for money.