One Is Fun, but a Group Is a Party

I’d never been on a group tour before and I had a lot of reservations about joining one in China.

There’s a perception that group tours are filled with people in their 80s, riding on a bus, eating dinner at four, and being, well, old and boring.

I did a lot of homework and went with a company called Overseas Adventure Travel. It was a 21-day trip (18 really) that started in Beijing and hopscotched across the country with stops in places like Xi’an and Chengdu and went to Tibet, included a three-day cruise on the Yangtze River, and ended in Hong Kong. It was one of the few itineraries that didn’t have a Shanghai component, something I didn’t need because I’d already spent a week there.

Before this trip started, I wasn’t a very experienced traveler and certainly not much outside Europe. I knew the language barrier in China was going to be high and it would be almost impossible for me to accomplish the list of things on this itinerary without some help. The price was also pretty reasonable. For about $200 a day (airfare not included) you get your room and most meals, plus a daily activity, cruise, bullet train, and plane tickets inside the country. It would cost me that much a day to stay at home!

The OAT groups are small. They max out at 16 people and ours had just seven, including me. We had one guide who took us on the entire trip and we were joined by a different guide in each city who was a local expert. The published itineraries warned of lots of walking and said people should be in good health. I read this as code for “No old people in scooters.”

OAT also doesn’t charge an extra fee for solo travelers. Most travel companies do and the fees can be high.

Our group was made up of the matriarch of an Arizona family and her three adult children. A woman from St. Louis was traveling solo as was another guy from Florida. While I was the youngest person in the group, I was not the tallest. One guy had a good inch on me and his brother wasn’t a whole lot shorter. The brother’s long gray hair, tattoos, and unruly beard made him an instant hit with many of the Chinese people and they all wanted photos with the giant Americans.

Members of the group seemed to click right away and there was no drama at all. I think we were all getting beaten down by the extreme summer heat and were more focused on sunscreen and who’s got enough water versus any other kind of conflict. Meals were served family-style on lazy Susans and our palates expanded with each spin of the wheel.

But group tours aren’t perfect. And this is not a reflection on the people in my group at all. Let me stress that, the Arizona matriarch will hunt me down and kill me if I don’t. This is NOT about my group, they are wonderful.

Remember, you are turning your vacation time over to someone else to manage and you are on THEIR schedule. I laughed when we got to the Great Wall and the tour leader said “Ok, we will spend two-hours here and then meet back at the bus.” Now I didn’t know this at the time, but two-hours at the wall is PLENTY. Still, you think “I just spent 15-hours on a plane and spent thousands of dollars to get here and it’s for two stinkin’ hours!?!”

You’d later get 30-minutes at a temple or an hour at a museum. The guides tend to be right about how much time you’ll want to spend at an attraction, but maybe YOU want to spend more time or even less. There was one overcrowded, under-air-conditioned museum I was ready to leave after 10-minutes.

And there’s lots of shopping on these tours. Something I certainly would have skipped if I were in charge. But there is security and convenience that comes with a good group tour. That’s something you tend to appreciate when someone else is handling your luggage or escorting you past the ticket lines at popular attractions.

One last note about tours in general. They don’t tend to book things that are a lot of fun! Monument, temple, museum visits are all great, but when you’re looking at a potential itinerary make sure it’s got something to do that you’d consider fun or at least get some time out on your own. Our tour included a night of Chinese opera. Not something I’d put into the “fun” category. I’m glad I saw it, but I don’t need to do that again.