Good day to you and once again thanks so much for arranging such a amazing trip for all us.\u00a0 Initial comments would be the structure of this trip was such that it took all of the stress out of travelers to a country where English could be a barrier.\u00a0 Every step of the way we would have a driver and\/or guide show up at a airport, or take us to a airport, or a hotel without us having to worry about a thing.\u00a0 Many days drivers would go through toll booths and pay charges, or guides would take us on tours of museums and purchase the tickets for us when we got there.\u00a0 Absolutely wonderful, stress free, and as we found, tremendous value for the money we paid for the entire trip.<\/p>\n
The hotels, by and large were extraordinary.\u00a0 The room on the Halong Bay cruise really stood out and the upgrade in Hong Kong(complimentary) was the most extravagant room with the \u201cview of a lifetime\u201d.\u00a0 If you had anything to do with the upgrade thank you so very much.\u00a0 It was memorable.\u00a0 We agree the room on the boat during the Mekong cruise was a little \u201coff\u201d, but more than made up by the remarkable service from all staff on the ship.\u00a0 The Saigon Morin hotel in Hue was also a first rate room.<\/p>\n
The guides and drivers with the company you requisitioned were top notch, knowledgeable, personable, very good command of the English language, customer-service oriented to a fault, humble, passionate, and just wonderful folks.\u00a0 Keep these guys.\u00a0 And on the note of guides, we would not have learnt nearly what we did on the basis of going through a museum and reading off of a placard.\u00a0 The guides brought forward \u201cinterpretations\u201d beyond the written word that truly expanded our knowledge base as they made it interesting.\u00a0 I hesitate to use their names, but will try as they were so above and beyond anything we could have expected…….Lim (Saigon), Annh (Mekong), Thang….pronounced Chan for Hue and Hoi An, Joe (phonetic) for Hanoi and Kao for Siem Reap.\u00a0 And finally, the drivers were all very confident and safe in their procedures.\u00a0\u00a0 We just sat back and relaxed.<\/p>\n
One of the things the girls found which you may wish to consider in future excursions was the opera house in Saigon.\u00a0 We watched a amazing \u201ccirque\u201d show with dancers and music….the \u201cAO show\u201d\u00a0 that was very special.\u00a0 The price was reasonable, and the show gave us a visual image of the life and culture of the country in our first day.<\/p>\n
The food was really something.\u00a0 No matter where we went folks went to great lengths to present their food in a very special way.\u00a0 One nite on the Halong cruise the staff paraded out one of the courses surrounding a pineapple that was hollowed out and lit on the inside to our tables.\u00a0 Again amazing.<\/p>\n
The one thing that I found difficult, probably due to a asthmatic condition and catching a cold was the pollution.\u00a0 I recall Veronika also saying she experienced some discomfort in her throat.\u00a0 Simply could not get over how \u201chazy\u201d the conditions were due to the smog in the air.\u00a0 In any regard, not sure if wearing a mask would have helped, but it did put a slight damper on the trip.<\/p>\n
All in, for Dianne and I probably one of the most memorable trips we will ever take.\u00a0 It was great having the company of good friends in Jim and Veronika such that we could share many of these\u00a0 experiences together.\u00a0 Well done, Karen.<\/p>\n
Edwin & Dianne<\/em><\/p>\n William & Veronika<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Good day to you and once again thanks so much for arranging such a amazing trip for all us.\u00a0 Initial comments would be the structure of this trip was such that it took all of the stress out of travelers to a country where English could be a barrier.\u00a0 Every step of the way we would have a driver and\/or guide show up at a airport, or take us to a airport, or a hotel without us having to worry about a thing.\u00a0 Many days drivers would go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vexploretravel.com\/sites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vexploretravel.com\/sites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vexploretravel.com\/sites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vexploretravel.com\/sites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vexploretravel.com\/sites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vexploretravel.com\/sites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5426,"href":"https:\/\/www.vexploretravel.com\/sites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions\/5426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vexploretravel.com\/sites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vexploretravel.com\/sites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vexploretravel.com\/sites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}