Testimonials

We just returned from an 18 day trip to Southeast Asia. Ruby helped us plan a great trip and other than an initial mix-up with our hotel upon arrival everything else went as planned. We cannot thank our guides and drivers enough. They are the ones who made the trip! Always on time. Always professional. Sharing their personal stories and the history of the countries: Toan in Saigon, Viet in Hanoi, Sangnam in Siem Reap, Nam in Hue and Hoi An and Wat in Lang Prabang – thank you! We loved every moment of our trip and hope to return someday!

My husband and I with another couple traveled for 25 days in Thailand and Vietnam. Mr. Lam did an excellent job customizing a tour based on our interest. The guides and drivers provided were excellent making the trip stress free. We enjoyed the guides personal stories about life in their countries. We couldn’t of asked for a better trip. Thank you Mr. Lam!

In 2013 we travelled for the first time with Asia Pioneer and Ms Kata Tran organized our Vietnam/Cambodia Trip. Everything was planed perfectly, inquiries answered promptly and the price competitive. No wonder that we decided to do further trips with the company in that region. So, in 2014 we travelled to Laos and Myanmar.

2015 we had the chance to travel for a longer period of time and asked Kata again to organize our trip, but this time for THREE months! The trip showed us parts of Cambodia and Vietnam, we had not seen before and the North of Thailand.
There is always something special in our itinerary recommended by Kata (we love to do cooking-classes in every country we visit and local restaurants), she knows how to combine our ideas / wishes with her recommendations and we never regretted following her advice.

Most of the guides and drivers are simply great as well as always on time, well knowledgeable and willing to adopt the itinerary within their possibilities if we come up with some extra wishes or different plans. The hotels chosen by Kata are for the most part according to our expectations (at some places the options are limited though). In the rare case that something is not perfect, Kata was always there to support, to arrange chances or to reorganize. Thanks for that! We appreciate this very much.

We just came back from another 86 days trip and Kata was again in charge of organizing Thailand (South and East) and Myanmar for us.

Myanmar:
If there is a chance we recommend to book Ballooning over Bagan – it was so wonderful and worth the money. The cooking-class at Inle Lake (Htoo) and “shopping” at the local market before cooking was another highlight as well as our lunch at a local Mon House in Mawlamyine and our stay at The Hpa An Lodge.
We had again a great time especially in Myanmar with extremely helpful and careful guides. Even it might not being “fair” I would like to highlight three guides: Ms Moh Moh in Mandalay, Ms. Ma Kyawk Aye Than in Mrauk U and Mr Aung Myin in Yangon. Ask for them if you are travelling to Myanmar.

Thailand: we loved the Monte Guesthouse in Pak Chong, and had great fun in Ku Ka Sing where we prepared our lunch with locals, had our own photographer and musician with us all the time, were greeted by the person in charge of Tourism and leaded through the ruins of Ku Ka Sing Historical Park by three pupils and their teacher. Our Thailand Trip ended with a stay at Si-Ri-La Farm (a dented camp with limited electricity) where we enjoyed such warm hospitality.

Is there any bigger compliment for Asia Pioneer and Ms Kata Tran than our repeated booking with them?

My husband, two friends and our (20 year old) granddaughter did a modified version of Asia Pioneer’s Bay to Angkor trip in Vietnam and Cambodia. It was wonderful from start to finish. Traveling in two countries where none of us speaks the language can be stressful but Asia Pioneer made it easy. We didn’t worry about a thing! It was a private tour for just the five of us – no big bus full of people we didn’t know.
1. The planning was simple. We worked with Lam Duong who was responsive and very accommodating to our needs. Together we developed a trip itinerary that worked for us and included all the major highlights. Lam suggested a one night homestay near a national park in Vietnam and it was a big hit with everyone. It gave an opportunity to get a small glimpse of how real people live – rather than every night at a hotel.
2. Our guides were excellent and spoke English very, very well. We had a series of five guides as we traveled around the two countries. It was reassuring to know that someone would be at the airport to pick us up, get us to our hotel and show us around. You could see that each of them is passionate about their country and wanted to share as much knowledge and information as we needed. We couldn’t have asked for better guides. The drivers were excellent too. We felt very safe and the vehicles were spacious and clean. One even had wifi.
3. The itinerary was totally customizable. Every day was filled with varied activities. The best part of a private tour is that we could adjust the timing of the start of the day and decide how long we wanted to spend at a site.
4.. Value for the price. I looked at many travel companies before deciding on Asia Pioneer. I liked the fact their itinerary emphasized both culture and the wonderful food of Vietnam and Cambodia. Asia Pioneer’s prices were as good or better than the other companies we considered.
Bottom line – we would recommend Asia Pioneer to anyone heading to Southeast Asia. We liked it so much we are already thinking of a trip to Laos and Myanmar. Lam will be the first one I contact when we start working on that!

My wife and I booked a 21 day tour with Asia Pioneer and spent some time in email correspondence with Lam in Hanoi as to what we required and how best to fit the tour to our needs, including rest days as my wife has Parkinson’s. At every stage we were fully informed of options and emails were answered swiftly and comprehensively. Which hotels would be best were discussed and settled on too.
The tour itself was fantastic. We were met by a guide and driver at every airport and given well-informed tours everywhere we went by English-speaking guides who were very willing to talk about anything to do with Vietnam. They had also been briefed about Parkinson’s, which was particularly impressive.
The hotels were excellent too. The mix of activities was varied and interesting from cyclo tours of Hanoi, Halong Bay, cooking classes and foodie tours to name just a few. I would strongly recommend this company. They will not let you down. And thanks to Lam for setting it all up – brilliant!

We will definitely using Asia Pioneer for our next tailor made trip. Excellent and prompt service from Ruby in planning our trip to Myanmar. Great hotels, activities, transport and guides. Reasonable prices. Definitely happy to recommend and we will be using again.