Travel Review: Thailand & Vietnam Luxury Trip, Bangkok, Hanoi, Chiang Mai Cooking Class, Khao Yai National Park, Halong Bay

See Question #1 above.  I think we would have scheduled more free time for ourselves to explore the cities we were in.  Sometimes the itinerary felt too structured and too compact.  Also would have more closely looked at how much driving we were doing between sites.  It felt like we spent 1/3 of our time in a car during the trip.  We should have paid more attention to this during our planning.

[TRAVEL COMPANY'S COMMENTS]

Thank you for your positive feedback. I’m glad we were able to put together an itinerary that you enjoyed and that you found the accommodations pleasant. Thank you for letting me know that the elephant sanctuary in Chiang Mai and the cooking class were highlights of your trip as well as the Halong Bay cruise!

I also appreciate you bringing to my attention the points you raised about transit time. We are reviewing our proposal process to make sure that, going forward, all transit times are listed when the transfer is an hour or more. Your second point of feedback about Mai Chau is something we are reviewing and thank you for bringing this up. I have discussed with our local office in Hanoi on how we can address this going forward. It seems that, at this point, Mai Chau has been getting more inundated with travelers, so we are looking into other alternatives for our guests. Lastly, the point regarding the elephant riding in Khao Yai – thank you so much for bringing this to my attention. The original itinerary did not include this – as we only support places which support animal rights and rehabilitation - like the place we had in the itinerary in Chiang Mai and that you enjoyed. I have investigated with our local office in Bangkok into how this happened. We’ve arranged this itinerary in the past and this is the first time we have had a guest taken to an elephant ride during this itinerary. What I discovered was that a newer staff member there who came from another company thought that with the word “jungle trekking”, we meant “elephant jungle trekking” as this was how they arranged in her previous company. Additionally, upon review by our operation team, this small change in the confirmed itinerary went unnoticed. I have since taken this opportunity to have a heartfelt conversation with our operation team about the importance of being on the lookout for these kinds of mistakes and took the time to share with them the differences between an ethical elephant sanctuary and elephant riding, so all newer staff members are aware, and how we should not arrange the latter for our guests. Also, we are adding some additional checks during the operation process to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. We have also met with the guide involved to emphasize that the customer is always right and to follow the customer if they wish to not participate in an activity.

Thank you for your input and bringing these things to my attention so we can make improvements going forward for our future guests. We hope that we can have the opportunity to assist you again when you are traveling in Asia!