Thailand Travel Review: Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Isan, Mekong River, Khmer Ruins

Although most of my feedback regarding the trip and travel company are positive, I was disappointed with the following things:

• Limited hotel choices - I would've preferred being able to choose from a list of hotels in my budget range. There were a couple of hotels that I absolutely disliked and never would've chosen.
• Limited food choices and restaurants on part of our trip - Although our first guide was great, he tended to make our food choices for us. We rarely had a chance to choose what we wanted to eat and where. While in Khorat, I had stated what I wanted to eat and our guide ignored the request and dropped me off at a "touristy" restaurant while he went elsewhere and ate what I had requested. He did apologize for the mistake, though.
• Cooking class fiasco - According to our itinerary, we were supposed to take a cooking class in Chiang Mai on a Saturday. However, the school never picked us up for the class. We found out that the cooking school no longer had classes on Saturdays. The travel company failed to confirm the class with the school and update our itinerary. We ended up having to take a cooking class in Chiang Rai. Luckily, we ended up liking the class, but the whole situation caused us some stress since we had no idea what to expect.
• The travel company needs to better describe the activities in the itinerary. For example, on our last day in Isan, we were told we were going to look at some rock paintings. We had no idea that this was supposed to be a hike and a rather vigorous one at that. I was wearing a long skirt and only had a small bottle of water when we started the hike. It was only after we started the hike that I realized that we were on a hike! My husband didn't even have any water and it was very hot that day. We were both rather upset that this was not detailed on our itinerary. Also, when we were in Krabi, our itinerary only said we were going to visit Phi Phi. I was extremely disappointed to find out that we were stuck visiting the islands with a whole boat full of other tourists. I only expected to have to be with other tourists during the cooking class so I was surprised when we had to be part of a tour group, which is what we wanted to completely avoid on this trip.
• Inner-country travel airport layovers were too long - We spent far too much time sitting around in airports on this trip. I think the flights could've been better arranged.