Testimonials

We spent almost a year working with Kata of Asia Pioneer to plan our month-long trip for four to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. I am someone who likes planning trips and I could not have asked for a better partner in Kata. Kata and IP are both very professional and every detail was well planned out, and most importantly, well carried out for the entire month-long trip. Kata put together the entire trip, I made some minor changes, including upgrading some of the hotels, all without any problems. Sometimes email communication was not as prompt as we would have liked, so we called a few times to iron out some details. On the whole, communication went well. All of our guides were excellent (with the exception of 1) and made our experience all the more rich and personal. We came away having learned so much about each country and culture that only the personal contact with a caring and knowledgable local can offer. We liked the flexibility throughout the trip, to change or add something. Kata took the time to meet with us for coffee in Hanoi, a lovely gesture. I highly recommend IP.

We were a group of three experienced travelers who normally do their own planning and logistics. Southeast Asia was a new travel territory for us and we felt we needed some local expertise to get the most out of our trip. We were very impressed with the how Asia Pioneer worked with us to put together a comprehensive 27-day tour that catered to our interests. This was our first tour with them & hopefully won’t be the last. They arranged all our hotels which were great, all airline tickets that were required during the tour, land transportation which was very comfortable and great English speaking local guides that gave us a great feel for the culture and daily life. During the daily travels, the tour guides were also able to take us to local eating establishments that served great food but a non-native might miss. We enjoyed meeting Kata from Asia Pioneer Head office when we arrived in Hanoi. Overall we were extremely happy with the tour.

Asia Pioneer designed a wonderful customized itinerary including tours, drivers, guides, hotels, internal flights, etc. Throughout the whole process, Lam was professional and responsive to our requests. We were in four countries – Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand and in each we found the accommodations comfortable and the guides informative. Lam also arranged for a variety of activities – boat rides, cooking lessons, acrobatic performances, a home-hosted meal, etc. All these added to a memorable tour. I highly recommend Asia Pioneer.

It is not easy to decide on which aspects of our trip to highlight since there were so many. I will begin by saying that I highly recommend this company and Mr. Lam who went out of his way to accommodate our needs and provide us with a flawless experience from start to finish. Communicating with Lam thru emails over the course of a couple of months, we were able to fine-tune a custom itinerary that took us from the south of VN to the north with experiences we will never forget and accommodations that were of high quality. The four of us are well seasoned over 60 and fit travelers having lived in and visited more than 50 countries between us, and while we do appreciate the touristy stuff we are more interested in the cultural hands-on local experiences. Lam made sure that our itinerary provided us with all of this as well as the 4 and 5-star accommodations in the Sheratons when possible. We also were able to make some changes during our trip as needed thanks to Lam and the flexibility of the guide. Of note were the quality of our guides and drivers, the various Mekong delta boat trips and the interesting local stops, the historical sites in each city , the silkworm demonstration, the free evening in Hanoi when we booked a night Vespa tour (a must-do!), the street food evening , and of course, the magic of being on Halong Bay. But really there was so much more I can’t even begin to mention. There are many things that go into making for a memorable, successful holiday and Lam has the experience and genuine desire to ensure that his clients are satisfied and well cared for in his country.

We traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia in January 2019 booking our holiday through Asia Pioneer. I can’t speak highly enough of our experience by booking a tour with this company. When we started looking at going to Vietnam and Cambodia we found the website for Asia Pioneer. We chatted with them online then requested a quote and itinerary for a 15-day tour. The travel representative was extremely professional and punctual in her responses. We had many opportunities to fine-tune the itinerary to our personal preferences including the grade and type of accommodations we wanted to stay in. We were nervous about booking everything online but all of our concerns were totally unfounded. Our biggest concern was whether or not someone would actually be at the airport to meet us when we arrived. Our guide and driver were there at each and every city we arrived at. The guides spoke good English, were extremely knowledgeable and punctual. We always had a driver and guide with us, except for the evenings when we were on our own. All in all the pacing of the tour was good. We opted to have a totally free day in Hoi An at the midway point of the holiday and it was lovely to be totally on our own for that day. I cannot speak highly enough of our experience with Asia Pioneer they delivered and more on what they promised. I would not hesitate to recommend this company to anyone planning a trip to Indochina.

Our honeymoon trip was organized by Kata Tran. After many emails, we planned our three weeks itinerary based on our preferences and Kata’s recommendations. We stayed at Hanoi, Halong Bay, Phong Nha, Hue, Hoi An, Ho Chi Minh, Mekong Delta, and Phu Quoc. Sometimes the itinerary we choose was tiresome but the professionalism of Asia Pioneer helped us to not have any anxiety during the trip. Because this trip was for our honeymoon we generally choose luxury hotels and private drivers and guides. We had the best trip of our lives. Kata thought for everything, all drivers were driving safely and all guides were experts and always before the time we agreed and most of them with understandable English pronounce. We could make changes during the trip and Kata answered some questions we had even very late hours. I have to mention especially our guide on Central Vietnam, Banh. He was very knowledgeable, very friendly, very informative and we could share conversations about everything. His pronounce was perfect and he took a photo of us all the time. With him, we had our best days in Vietnam. All the hotel rooms were what we agreed and all had some surprises for our honeymoon. Kata gives us a sim card with unlimited 4G worked on the whole trip and we had bottled water from our guides and drivers all the time. We had also the pleasure to meet Kata as well during the trip and we had a pleasant conversation. I would choose this company any time on our future trips. Thanks, Kata, for everything.