| Rating |
Date Attended [v] |
Reviewer |
Gender |
Age |
Where From? |
Group Type? |
|
Wonderful informative tour of Chinatown
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| Sun, Aug 23 10:00 AM |
Diepstraten |
Female |
50-59 |
International Tourist(s) |
Family With Children |
| On August 23rd we took a WokWiz-tour through Chinatown with 3 other families.
Our guide was Dorothy Quock, a very knowledgeable, wise and elegant lady with a great sense of humor. A native of Chinatown, she knew the history of every building and the people that live(d) there. During our walk she informed us about the history and customs of the Chinese immigrants who came to settle in the United States.
Being an official guide (of the city of Antwerp, Belgium) myself, I am probably a bit critical of other guides, but I must say that I was absolutely enthralled with Mrs Quock. It is of course a great privilege and advantage to have a local guide, who has so much more to offer.
Mrs Quock took us to a teashop where we were given a short, but very interesting and informative talk about the different kinds of tea by the owner. He showed us the right way of brewing tea and he also let us taste it. Mrs Quock then pointed out different kinds of shops and told us about the different products and services they offered. However, this was only done in an informative way, so that we could learn more about Chinatown and the way of life there. It was certainly not meant to try and push us to buy things, like some guides do on tours.
We also learned about the different religious beliefs of the Chinese people in San Francisco and we had the opportunity to visit the Ma-Tsu Temple.
I have worked as a tourguide for an American touroperator and must have walked through Chinatown a hundred times, but I always felt like an outsider in this for me rather strange and very different world. Mrs Quock opened a door for us through which we could enter this mysterious place and for the first time, I felt more like a welcomed visitor than a stranger.
After the tour, we had a great lunch in a very nice Chinese restaurant. Mrs Quock told us there about the different dishes and showed us how to use the chopsticks.
My husband, daughter and myself, are delighted to have taken this tour and we
can strongly recommend it to everyone who is fascinated by this for tourists somewhat mysterious community within the city of San Francisco. It was great fun, we learned a lot and laughed a lot, thanks to our very charming and spunky guide. |
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|
Informative tour of Chinatown
|
| Sun, Aug 23 10:00 AM |
jgarys |
Male |
50-59 |
Domestic Tourist(s) |
Family Without Children |
| Excellent tour of Chinatown with an emphasis on Chinese culture and history in San Francisco. Our tour guide was extremely knowledgeable shared interesting stories about her life and growing up in Chinatown. We met a few of her friends along the way which added to our experience. The only area that could be improved is in the selection of dim sum at lunch... I wish we could have selected the items we were served... Overall this was a great tour and well worth the time and money spent. |
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Lots of fun and very informative
|
| Sun, Aug 23 10:00 AM |
dlweinreb |
Male |
50-59 |
Domestic Tourist(s) |
Other |
| Dorothy, our tour guide, explained everything very clearly and answered all our questions very well. She was lots of fun and wonderful. |
|
|
Great Tour
|
| Sun, Aug 23 10:00 AM |
garyhite |
Male |
40-49 |
Domestic Tourist(s) |
Family With Children |
| Our guide was very knowledgeable and was a wonderful storyteller. She kept us entertained and interetsed the whole time. The food was great as well! |
|
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Wok Wiz Walking Tour is lots of fun!
|
| Fri, Aug 21 10:00 AM |
raynecastle |
Female |
60-69 |
Domestic Tourist(s) |
Group of Friends |
| This is our third time to do this tour. We always are learning new information, stories, food, etc. We have also done the eating your way through Chinatown tour and highly recommend that tour also. |
|
Insightful look into Chinatown's Past and Present
|
| Wed, Aug 19 10:00 AM |
billpatterso |
Male |
40-49 |
Domestic Tourist(s) |
Family With Children |
| Really enjoyed Frank's (our guide) personal insight into Chinatown and into the Chinese culture. Dim sum lunch was fun and interesting. |
|
Not all it's made out to be...Expecting more
|
| Wed, Aug 19 10:00 AM |
digy07 |
Male |
30-39 |
Domestic Tourist(s) |
Couple on a Date |
| My girlfriend and I went on the tour with Chuck. We were expecting a tour of Chinatown that showed us things that you usually wouldn't see or not as obvious from walking down the street. The tour really didn't offer us anything exciting or out of the ordinary. We visited a school house, a meat stand, a temple, and a fortune cookie factory (the highlight of the trip). Most of the tour was a lesson on chinese culture and had nothing to do with the actual city. The meat stand consisted of a store front with roasted ducks hanging in the window. The temple wasn't much of a temple, the school house where we stood for about 10 minutes had jackhammers going off 15 ft away, and the fortune cookie factory consisted of 3 women folding cookies. That was neat but not worth the cost of the trip if you can find it on your own. The tour guide told us of a real marketplace up the street but it was too busy for him to take us. That was the kind of stuff we wanted to see, not store fronts. We did not do the lunch and departed the tour right before since it was quite frankly boring. I would recommend walking around yourself with a map of the area and save yourself some money. |
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Nice Tour
|
| Wed, Aug 19 10:00 AM |
cpizzato |
Female |
40-49 |
Domestic Tourist(s) |
Family Without Children |
| We enjoyed the lunch and some of the history. We would have liked more detail on the food we saw on the tour- some of the herbs in the shops, strange things in the market etc.... |
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Boring and Disappointing
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| Sun, Aug 16 10:00 AM |
junkshopping |
Female |
20-29 |
Local |
Group of Friends |
| Have you ever been on a tour where it feels like the tour guide is making mountains out of mole hills while point out and discussing the most insignificant details of your surroundings? This is EXACTLY what this tour is. It is an underwhelming 3 hour tour of a two block radius. I will not recommend it to anyone. It was definitely not worth the $47 we each paid. Though our tour guide was a very nice lady, she was extremely boring and slow speaking and the tour itself was a complete disappointment. A majority of the time was spent walking through and standing in the back alleys, listening to the tour guide point out the FORMER sites of different buildings and her OWN life story. We expected to hear some useful tips about modern day China town somewhere along the way (best places to try different dishes, best places to buy specific products)....anything...There were none. Anything she told us about a store could be inferred from simply walking through the doors and taking a quick glance around. We spent about 20 minutes of the tour just briefly passing through the main streets to get to the alleys. Several times during the tour, members of my group, including me, debated on whether or not to continue with the tour or just forfeit the money we paid which we were sure was going towards a delicious lunch at the conclusion of the three hours. Unfortunately, we found out that it would have been to our advantage to make better use of our time and just leave the tour. We were taken to the Four Seas restaurant for the most bland dim sum we have tried thus far. We are all huge fans of dim sum and knew from prior visits to China town not to eat at this restaurant. The food is of substandard quality. In addition, we are well aware of the prices for the various plates and the items we were served were all from the cheapest category on the menu. All together at an average dim sum restaurant, it would have been about $20-$25 total for the food we were served. We were extremely frustrated by the end and left immediately after lunch to go down the street for real food. For those of you visiting San Francisco's China town, I strongly discourage you from signing up for this tour. There are far better tours of the city for even less money than this one. |
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Not what i expected and so not recommended!
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| Sun, Aug 16 10:00 AM |
Lapadilla |
Female |
30-39 |
Local |
Individual |
| thought it was a dim sum tour. Not a tour of Chinatown and history behind the settlers. Food at the end wasn't that good and again i expected to go to more resturants. Not worth the money. I could have went to a more decent place to eat and gotten more food at the same cost of the tour.. |
