Guide Fees In China-May 2015

Today we received our fees for the guides in China.  We've been asking for these prices since early on in our adoption but the agency told us, these fees are not available until a few days before you travel.  Well, now we know why!  These fees are outrageous...and after polling other China adoptive parents on Facebook, we received confirmation, these rates are way out of the ballpark!

We made it very clear with our agency that we are on a tight budget, we are not doing any sightseeing, not visiting the orphanage, not doing anything that will cost us extra money.  We only wanted the basic package, adoption related business only, period; the end. 

Our agency came back to say, we must pay for a guide and driver, every day we are in the province, regardless if we use them or not!  (we've never had this with our prior 3 adoption trips) 

Let me make this very clear--these charges are ONLY guide & driver.  It. The end.  No, it does not include hotel, planes, trains or boats. 

We are to pay a total of $4,000.00 for guide & driver fees in China. 

Here's the break down:

Transportation: $100.00 per day in each province, regardless if we use the driver 1 day or 5 days, we are required to pay for every day we are in province. 

Extra $1200.00 ($400.00 per province) if we want driver to pick us up at the airport and drive us to the airport. 

Guide Fee: We must pay $100.00 every day we are in province, regardless if they are doing adoption business on our behalf or sightseeing around town, because remember, we are only using them for adoption business.  This is our 4th adoption trip, we don't require hand-holding through China. 

Let's just say, those who have walked this journey, totally understand the level of stress involved just prior to travel and to have an agency adding to the stress, is even more crazy! Especially since adoptive parents pay a wealth of money to these agencies.  It's crazy!

We've come up with some back up plans and Earl plans to contact the agency tomorrow.  This is more that we paid for our international plane tickets for 5 people! 

We can't wait for the next 11 days to pass so that we can put this all behind us, board the plane and concentrate solely on bringing our boys home!!  That will be sweet victory!!!