Testimonials

We began our holiday in Cambodia with flights and a hotel to visit the temples near Angkor Wat. After a one-week stay in Siem Reap, Asia Pioneer’s tour guide and driver picked us up by to drive cross-country to Phnom Penh to begin a longer tour of Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh city to Hanoi with visits to many areas along the way. To assist us with our planning, Asia Pioneer proposed a detailed itinerary designed to meet our route, schedule and several requests.

The latter outstanding tour company organized all of our transport, accommodation, and tours to a wide variety of museums, artisans, artisan manufacturers, temples and pagodas, and of urban and rural life in the cities and towns. Daily each tour guide and driver met our group of four always on time with cold bottled water, a full schedule of the day’s tour and occasionally lunch on the way. During the tour, we had three air flights and guides changed when we flew to new cities. These guides easily spoke in English about the history, environment and many interesting features of their locales. At the end of our tour, we all agreed that we had learned a lot about these countries while being very conveniently transported from one site to the next.

We did think the tour could be improved by increasing the quality of our boutique hotels to four- or five-star hotels, even though this would increase the cost. They could, for example, offer three levels of accommodation possibly designated as “good, better, best” respectively. We believe a higher level of accommodation would have made our ‘full touring” schedule more relaxing and enjoyable.

Nevertheless, our superbly arranged tour of a large variety of interesting tour sites easily accessed by the assistance of able guides, and drivers always arriving on time, ready to discuss many aspects of their countries made this moderate cost visit extremely attractive to us. We felt fortunate that this company selected sites we would have selected ourselves had we knowledge of them, organized appropriate transport and accommodation near large city centers to travel conveniently from one site to the next while allowing some free time most evenings to interact with city life. We also had all the opportunities we wished to take many photographs during our trip.

Just returned from a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. Asia Pioneer consultant Kata Tran prepared our incredibly full and detailed three-week itinerary that included Hanoi, Sapa, Ninh Binh, Halong Bay, Siem Reap Cambodia, Ho Chi Minh City, Mekong Delta, Ci Chu tunnels, and Phu Quoc island. I was at first a little concerned that it was a bit more than my family of six could chew. And while the trip was ambitious and at times exhausting, I would not have done much, if anything, differently. Asia Pioneer and the three private guides — Tony for Hanoi, Sary for Siem Reap, and Dat for Saigon — truly made the trip a once in a lifetime experience. The guides and drivers were always ready at the appointed time and took us to places I never would have considered had we not used guides. They were unbelievably knowledgeable about Vietnamese history and culture, spoke excellent English, were incredibly patient, and were just great people to talk to. The hotels were all excellent, and the vans very roomy and comfortable.

For a trip of this length, I expect that at some point, something will go wrong. That was not the case. As just one example of the amazing service we received, on one occasion, we arrived at our hotel at 11:00 pm. The front desk said that our breakfast was not included which I did not believe to be the case. I emailed Kata at 11:30 pm to let here know of this relatively minor misunderstanding. She responded to my email at 12:10 a.m. to let me know she had already spoken with the front desk and straightened everything out. On our last day, we had an early morning flight and had to leave the hotel at 5:30 am. Anticipating that we would not have time to eat, Kata had the hotel prepare box breakfasts for the trip. Truly exceptional. Now having done the trip, I would not ever do it again without using Asia Pioneer as my guide.

I’ve taken two trips with Asia Pioneer so far. One to Vietnam and one to Thailand. I used to plan my own trips and book my own hotels until someone referred me to Indochina. They booked everything and it was the best feeling ever because they did all of the work and I could simply relax the whole time. I showed up at the airport and they had someone waiting and holding a sign with my name on it. I always wanted to do that. 🙂 I was amazed at how affordable it all was as well. They created a great itinerary to start and then we tweaked it very easy to make it perfect. They picked great hotels and restaurants. We are vegetarian and they had no problem getting us food. The guides were fantastic. Very friendly and professional. I can’t wait to use them again in the future because they are the best.

Asia Pioneer was a very good travel agency. The trip was very reasonably priced, and Ms. Hien Pham, our Asia Pioneer Travel Consultant, was tremendously helpful with our itinerary and patient with our changing wishes.

I was extremely impressed with the guides we had at the various locations. They were very professional, always on time, and knowledgeable about everything and everywhere we went. (There was never a question that they were not able to answer for us–from the history of a site, to how crop rotation works in a given rural locale).

Also impressive were the drivers we had, and their ability to navigate the hectic city traffic, as well as get us to the distant rural locations.

I could not have been more pleased with every aspect of this trip and cannot compliment Indochina enough for making it happen that way.

We traveled to Vietnam in November for over 3 weeks. Our trip was organized by Lam at Asia Pioneer. We cannot recommend Lam & Indochina enough. All emails were answered promptly, our drivers and guides were extremely knowledgeable and helpful. We visited some amazing places that without Lam’s suggestion for our Itinerary we would have missed.

It was great to meet Lam in Hanoi before we moved on to the next part of our adventures. Once again we would definitely recommend Asia Pioneer for an amazing Vietnam holiday.

We used Asia Pioneers to plan our trip to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Lam did a spectacular job! We used his itinerary as a framework and then upgraded all of the hotels, which, while very very nice, were still inexpensive. Everything Lam arranged went flawlessly. The drivers were always on time and so courteous. They were flexible if and when we wanted to adjust the schedule, such as stopping at a local food market or going back to the hotel for a rest. We really enjoyed our guides as well. We had the pleasure of meeting Viet in Hanoi. He was a blast and treated us to amazing local foods and history. He wasn’t afraid to discuss local politics or opinions which was fascinating. In Ho Chi Min and the Mekong Delta we thoroughly enjoyed Lucy. She gave us insight into women and family issues as well as history and cultural awareness. In Hoi An we enjoyed Lam. He was very flexible and knowledgeable about history. The food tours were amazing and we tasted some culinary delights we never would have tried without the guidance of our guides. The beach resort was gorgeous and the water warm and clean. We loved the bike ride to the agricultural district where we were able to work the fields. The restaurant we stopped at was probably our favorite. The chef was willing to talk with us at length and share recipes.
Cambodia was an unexpected pleasure as well. I fell in love with Cambodia. The kindness of the people and the temple treasures were beyond words. We fell in love with these counties because we had the privilege to offer an ear to listen to their life stories. How grateful we were that they were willing to share. Such resilience and strength. Our guide told us to call him “Lucky”. He was fabulous too! Easy going and flexible!!
Our last stop was in Thailand. Here we met our guide Micky. He was really fun. We followed the itinerary which we thought would be too much but Micky kept a nice pace and continually fed us local delights such as mango sticky rice! Everything was great.
The only thing we may have done differently was to take a boat from the Mekong delta to Cambodia to avoid a long drive back to Danang. Plus it would have been interesting to tour via boat. Overall the trip was perfect. Highly recommend Lam. We will use him again for other trips!!