Testimonials

Hello Pham
I have many wonderful things to say about our trip- it all went absolutely to plan- our guide, airport meeting people, village hosts and drivers were fantastic- it is a great shame for anyone to visit the north of Vietnam and not go up to Sapa. We had no idea of what Vietnam Spirit Travel was about but your website looked fantastic, your response to my emails was prompt and efficient, and the trip went really well. We are a really fit 54 and 55 yr old couple. A lot of people our age would not cope with this trip- especially the mud at this time of yr - if I have one suggestion it would be to make people more aware of how difficult it is. It was after the trip that we read about it being in the "moderate / hard" category. We could certainly have spent more time up there and may well return- and in the meantime we will be recommending your company.
Many thanks for making it a success for us.
Best regards
Jos Benner - Australia

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Dear Nguyen,

Our trip to Vietnam was excellent. Our guide Ly was there to meet us from the overnight train and did an excellent job. She shared local knowledge and was very friendly and helpful, showing respect and also having a good sense of humor. Unfortunately at the end of the tour Ly was left behind at the train station by the taxi driver and had some difficulty obtaining a lift back to Sapa. I hope she arrived home safely that night.

I have one suggestion to improve the experience. The hotel itself was very good but the road that lead to it was very bad, making it diffficult at during the day and dangerous at night. A more centrally located hotel would have enabled us to discover more of Sapa town.

Thank you again and we hope to visit Vietnam again.

Yours sincerely,
Kathleen Humphrey - Australia

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Dear, Huy

We arrived good and safe back in Thailand and we are looking back on a pleasant 1 week stay in Vietnam.

Our last guide, Mss Phuong, asked us to fill in a feedback form on the way to the airport, witch i didn't do, i told her i prefer to send you an e-mail with my comments. I hope my comments can help to upgrade your service for future guests.

First of all congratulations for the perfect organisation of the whole tour. All guides and drivers were always on time, the whole trip runs smoothly. No complains about transportation vehicles, drivers or guides.

The accommodation was surprisingly very good. Only, breakfast in Hanoi A1 hotel was very poor compared with the very good breakfast in Tan Hai Long 1 hotel Sai Gon. Maybe 1 suggestion, give your guest an hotel-voucher for the Tan Hai Long hotel, because both time we checked-in there, they had to search very long to find our reservation.

Then our personal view on the excursions. This is what we feel (maybe other guests will think different):

The reason we booked an private tour and not a group tour, was in the hope that we would have the chance to explore a little more of the country-side. To have a closer view on the way of living of the Vietnamese people. I know with big groups, you need to fix a schedule, but when go private you should be more flexible.

Especially our visit to Mekong Delta was a big disappointment for us. Our day was arranged just the same as the big tour buses: mass-tourism. On the way to Mekong delta, we passed many coffee shops with hammock-seats for the guests. This is something very unique and not seen ever before for us, instead of giving us a stop in one of these places; 5 minutes before arriving on the mekong river, we stopped in an tourist-booby trap place to have a drink (or buy a souvenir). I preferred to have a coffee stop in one of the typical shops along the road! Also very unique to this area is the Cao Dai religion with there beautiful and colourful temples, we pass 2 of them along the road, why not stop to visit one???? (Maybe you do this in another excursion, but when you have clients coming only 1 week, you have to be more flexible and not stick to your routine-programme.) Also visiting the Delta was disappointing, take the boat, cross the river, 2 minutes on a horse, 5 minutes in a paddle-boat, lunch and cross the river again and that was it! I was hoping to see some daily life around the Delta, visit some villages, see fisherman busy: the only thing we see was Vietnamese very busy with serving the foreigner guests: mass tourism!

One more thing we didn't like about this day was all the "tipping". Money destroy the world, with introducing these tipping into your trips, you will destroy your people! We were lightly forced by our guide to tip every person we met on this trip (the boats man, the horse driver, the paddle woman, our driver, etc) and you can see already on their face that when you give them "only" 1 dollar: that instead of getting a happy "thank you" face, you only get back an disappointing "is this all?" face. I don't like this: please make your excursion a little more expensive, give the persons who drive the boats and the horse, a little more salary and everybody will be more happy!!!!!!

Same comment on our way to Cu Chi tunnel. Why not stop on the way to see some daily life along the way? We just drive long, visit the tunnel (witch was very impressive!), and drive long back.

Same on the way to Halong Bay. We pass so many rice-plantations. This is for Westerns a very unique sight. We saw many of other buses with tourists stopping along the road to have a look and take some pictures. Our driver just continue driving like crazy on high speed (taking unnecessary risks to pass other cars, buses and trucks) to stop in another big tourist booby trap place (read: big souvenir shop) for half hour(!). I know that your company or the driver get paid (or get free food and drink) to drop us in this kind of places, but i can tell you that most of the Western tourists don't like this kind of places, Souvenirs we prefer to buy in markets with local people and not in this kind of big-money-factory's. The cruise in Halong bay was excellent and nature really blessed Vietnam with such a wonderful creation!

Overall, we are left with a great impression of your country. All people we met were friendly and helpful (i hope for the country you can keep your nature because like i said, the desire to cash easy tourist-money is already threatening this). We do want to come back very soon to explore more of the country life. Now, because of our short travel time, we had to limit to the 2 big city Hanoi and Saigon, but the upper North and the Centre are interesting us to explore as well, only we hope we can find a better way to do this on a more flexible way with the chance to see the real country life.

One last thing, but nothing you can do about this: our ears still hurting because of the unnecessary (and very disturbing) day and night noise from all the cars and motorbikes: tuuuut tuuuuut, toeeett, toeeet...............

Lots of greetings and thanks for the good service,

Thierry (Belgium) and Mallika (Thailand)