Kingsley live for TravelMole from China – Day One
While The Mole is basking in the sun and warmth of Fiji, TravelMole’s intrepid Sales and Marketing man Kingsley Mason is enjoying a total contrast, visiting significantly colder China at the invitation of Jason Xu, the Executive Chairman of China Holidays along with a group of industry professionals to experience the real China.The group, including Bob Sparks from Travel Services Group, who consults to China Holidays, a number of travel agency representatives and China Holidays staff departed Sydney on 7 Jan and headed to Chengdu City in the Provence of Sichuan, in the South West of China, with Jason keen to demonstrate that although China is ancient, it is also rapidly modernising infrastructure – which is great news for inbound tourism.
China is focusing on changing existing perceptions that it is primarily a business destination and is backing this with serious investment in leisure tourism and encouraging more people to visit China through global marketing is one aspect of the leisure tourism strategy and equally important is to encourage leisure travellers to spend more time touring around.
One of the regions to benefit from this is Sichuan Provence and the big drawcard here is the Giant Panda, however, Sichuan has plenty more on offer, and everyone in the group is looking forward to experiencing the highlights of Sichuan.
The flight from Sydney to Shanghai was smooth and progressed according to schedule and having heard a number of traveller’s food tales regarding Asian airlines, I found the food on my first flight with China Eastern Airlines to be very good – though I am partial to Chinese food!
It possibly went down even a little better, as we were surrounded by members of the Barmy Army returning to the mother land – some more despondent than others! There were also some good ‘lost in translation’ experiences including the cryptic sentence on the flight safety card “Before opening an exit, should the following situations happen, evacuate the passengers from other exits”, and the video on DVT prevention exercises was also a big hit amongst passengers.
Seating was a little tight, particularly for taller people, but overall a good flight.
First impressions of Chengdu are that it is big & currently foggy, but it has twice the population of New Zealand and we are looking forward to exploring the city and surrounds – however this is later – first we are off to the Juizhaigou Scenic Area!
A Special Report by Kingsley Mason on location in Chengdu China for TravelMole
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