28 May 2019
Great tour – highly recommended!
Bill is great, knowledgeable and very open and pleasant. I literary booked the tour in the “last minute” (evening before) and Bill was kind enough to accept and meet me on-time in the following morning for a full-day tour till evening (knowing he had another full day tour in the following day). The fact that tour is based on the public transportation is also nice since it‘s more efficient (e.g. bullet train, avoid losing time on traffic) and it also gives another glimpse on the locals. My goal was to avoid the common-commercial-standard-touristic tours in which you arrive in a ~herd, take a photo and move on to the next place, and the tour with Bill provided just that- it was relaxed, with nice walks, explanations and discussions. Suzhou seems to have much less western tourists (in the entire day we saw only few) and it was the perfect place to spend the day and watch-discuss Chinese’s culture and history - old/new/garden/”water town” and more. I especially appreciate the many ‘small talks’ we had about Chinese people living TODAY. Thank you bill for the interesting tour – thank you for being open and a great guide :-)