Treasures of Southeast Asia: Best of Bali & Vietnam Tour

Hello, this is Paul G.  Recently went on a trip with this travel agency.  First day went to the Cu Chi tunnels north of Saigon, the Mekong Delta, then north to Hanoi where I explored rural town of Mai Chau.   Then travelled back to Hanoi and then out to Ha Long Bay

We went to Hanoi, Ho chi minh city in Vietnam, Siem Reap in Cambodia and Luang Prabang in Laos.

We had a great vacation. It was really easy working with our agent at this Southeast Asia travel company. She was very prompt in getting back to us with all our concerns and questions. We went back and forth with the the hotels we wanted and how we wanted to arrange our site seeing schedule. The agent worked with us and guided and helped us all the way. Very professional ! We would recommend using this company to our friends.

The guides were there to pick us up on time and waiting.  The vans were clean and nice. The guides were knowledgeable and helpful.  

This was our first time using a tour company through Zicasso as before this we were doing group tours only but were finding the pace there too hectic and felt were not getting enough time to look and enjoy things the way we would have liked to. We like to travel a lot and feel would like to do things the way we did for our Indo china tour.

I have food allergies and our agent conveyed the same to our gudes snd they made sure i was able to get food I was comfortable with.

Thankfully they got the most important things right: we were reliably met at airports by guides who could communicate with us in our language (English); we always had our lodgings with included breakfast arranged; we had guides, vehicles and drivers, and really interesting activities arranged. The trip itself, 33 days in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, was an outstanding life experience full of a wonderful and fascinating array of sights, people, food, culture.There were some issues that came up which could have been avoided if the tour operator had been more attentive, and which caused us annoyance and occasional stress. It started with our first guide, in Hanoi; they never told us they were switching us to a different guide than the one listed in our itinerary; they never gave our guide a copy of our itinerary; the guide we got was sweet enough but very inexperienced, did not adequately understand her responsibility to keep us safe, did not manage our time well, lost her phone and led us to feel we needed to take care of her instead of vice versa, deviated from our itinerary although that was really the fault of the tour operator who never gave her a copy of it (which we did when we realized the problem), and - probably due to a language skills gap - lied about whether we would get a bathroom stop in a 3-hour car ride and then tried to fix it so she made a stupid fruitless detour through Hanoi in rush hour en route to the airport to unsuccessfully look for a restroom even though she was told not to, and fail to adequately adjust to accommodate a member of our tour group with balance issues. 

Another issue was van transportation. We invariably got very comfortable vans for short trips between sites within a city, when it least mattered. But even though it was a luxury level vacation, several times we were provided with uncomfortable lower end older transit vans for longer road trips, and a couple of them didn’t have a full complement of seat belts - even after we complained and they told us it wouldn’t happen again. Also, none of the guides had microphones and my partner, who has hearing loss issues, often could not hear what they said on the vans.Our daily activity schedule proved to be unrealistic at times. Several times it was simply impossible to get to all the itinerary destinations, and even more often it was impossible to get the scheduled rest breaks in the middle of the day, and/or the daily activities ended much later at night than the itinerary schedule showed. As a result, we were often frazzled and tired, which undermined our ability to fully enjoy the trip.Some of the lodgings recommended by the tour operator, which we booked through them, were truly wonderful and memorable, but some were very disappointing and made us wonder if the tour operator had ever actually spent time checking them out in person. The resort in Ninh Binh in Vietnam was fabulous, with a terrific restaurant, but we didn’t get to enjoy it adequately because our guide didn’t get us there until almost 9 pm - when we were starving because we had again been unable to get through the itinerary schedule on time - and we had to leave right after breakfast the next morning. The hotel in Siem Reap is out of this world wonderful, with a good location, incredible decor, extraordinary service and excellent food; we were lucky to spend 4 nights there. We ended our trip at a resort on a cliff at Kata Noi beach in Phuket, where we got an upgrade to a huge comfortable suite with sunset views from its private porch. We also liked the hotel in Hue. But some of the other hotels were very disappointing, with mediocre (although always ample) breakfast food and spotty restaurant service (and due to our busy schedules we had to rely on eating in the hotels at times, as there was no time to venture further). The worst was the hotel in Chiang Mai in Thailand: location not near other restaurants and their dinner service very poor, room very dark and small; after one night, we checked ourselves out and moved to a more reliable luxury hotel at our own expense even though we had already paid for the other hotel and we understood we could not get a refund.

Most of our scheduled prepaid activities were fabulous bu there were a few glitches that could have been avoided by a more attentive tour operator. The first glitch was the water puppet show; we were promised that we could meet with puppeteers to learn more about it afterwards but this didn’t happen (nor could it because another show was scheduled to start right after ours), and the Hanoi guide didn’t know it was on the itinerary nor even that it could be arranged. This was a highlight experience much anticipated by my partner, a retired theater and TV designer/technician with experience in puppetry, and had been personally discussed beforehand on the phone with the tour operator, who had assured us it would be included. The tour guide said it was impossible and even laughed (nervously) at my partner when he insisted; he got angry at her, which was very awkward; she then called her contact with the tour operator company and they got us tickets to another water puppet show, with a backstage interview with puppeteers afterwards, the next night. In the end, we thoroughly enjoyed seeing two different water puppet companies and the backstage interview, but the whole snafu was extremely awkward with the tour guide caught in the middle - and also meant our scheduled Hanoi street food tour the second night had to be abbreviated to a stop in a crowded restaurant for a $3-4 bowl of pho after the second show.We totally enjoyed the many performance opportunities we had in our schedule: two fantastic circuses (in Saigon and Siem Reap), a couple of traditional dance performances with dinners, etc. The Royal Lunch in Hue was really a sort of theatrical experience, with artistically presented food that was also top quality. 

A highlight for us was the 2-day boat cruise on the Mekong River from Luang Prabang to the Thai border. I enjoyed the beautiful hotel on the hill in Pak Beng, but the tour operators should have warned us that it was on a steep mountain with many stairs and could present accessibility issues - which it did for my travel companions, one of whom fell and was pretty badly bruised with a loosened tooth. 

My wife and I just returned from a 3-week trip to Vietnam and Cambodia organized by the travel company.  We had used a company referred by Zicasso for a trip to Argentina in 2018 and were curious to see if we would be as satisfied after this trip as we had been after that one.  Suffice it to say, we were not disappointed!  This company did a terrific job in organizing our trip, securing comfortable, welcoming and well-located accommodations, setting us up with incredible guides with terrific local knowledge and very good English (we're from the US), arranging all our in-country flights and planning some extremely engaging and memorable outings and adventures.  

While I can't be sure, I think they also dialed up the weather - we only experienced 1 day of light precipitation in 19 days in the country!  They ensured we spent time in the North (Hanoi, Ninh Binh and Lan Ha Bay), Central (Hue and Hoi An), and South (Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta) parts of Vietnam and the temples (Siem Reap) in Cambodia. They also arranged an extensive array of food experiences and venues and provided many other memorable personal encounters with locals throughout Vietnam.  

Without fail, every day revealed many interesting aspects of the culture and history of Vietnam and Cambodia.  Our contact at the company was always responsive to our inquiries and requests - both before we left the US and while we were on our trip - and took time to meet with us personally in Ho Chi Minh City.  We were happy to be able to express our appreciation for his efforts in designing such a personalized adventure.  HIGHLY recommended.  

After returning home from a month-long trip to Asia, I am still wowed by the service provided by the travel agency and our guides in Vietnam. Since this was our first visit to the country, I reached out to the agency for itinerary recommendations, and thankfully, I was connected with Albee. She was incredibly responsive before and during our trip, and she paired us with such knowledgeable and hospitable guides.

Our first guide during the trip hosted us in Hanoi and SaPa. We opted to stay a bit more off the beaten path at an ecolodge which we can highly recommend, which is about 30 minutes away from the SaPa village center. We let our guide know we were interested in learning more about the local culture and exploring the countryside, and wow, he delivered! 

We went on the most memorable hike through the rice terraces and stopped to chat with several villagers along the way. He knew everyone. On top of that, he taught us about local flora and customs while on the hike and then the bike ride. We are already looking forward to returning to the North and further exploring the Vietnam/China border, but only if we can do it with him! The mountains were truly the highlight of our trip, and it wouldn't have been possible without him as our guide. If you are lucky enough to add SaPa to your itinerary, do yourself a favor and request him.

Our guide in Saigon, which was the last leg of our Vietnam trip, was so accommodating to our changing needs. After a couple of weeks of travel, we arrived in Saigon wanting a more relaxing pace. She seamlessly made alternate arrangements for us that were a perfect end to the trip. The most hospitable moment from our entire trip to Asia came when we expressed an interest in visiting a local family. She immediately suggested that she and her family host us for lunch at their home in the Mekong Delta the next afternoon. This was such an unexpected yet memorable end to our time in Vietnam. Our guide’s and her family's hospitality were unmatched, and we were so fortunate to have her as our guide.

From the start to the finish, this travel agency did a marvelous job in helping us set up our 19 day trip to Vietnam and Cambodia in Feb. - March 2018. The four of us, two couples, had lots of ideas and questions about the trip. Our representative was wonderful. I told her what we were thinking of, our budget, what we wanted to see and where our focus was and she devised an itinerary that hit all the objectives of our trip. We did a bunch of tweaking and sending questions and concerns over  time and she answered all very promptly and made sure that what we wanted in the trip was fulfilled.  When I told her we wanted to up-grade our hotels, she handled all the changes  without any problems.  She phoned several times to make sure all was going well with our planning and that we were happy with what she had set up for us.

Our guides were fabulous. They did everything and more to make sure we had the experiences we wanted. If they thought that what was supposed to happen that day wasn't what they would recommend, ie., eating at certain food markets, etc., they pointed us in another direction. They took into account some of the physical limitations of several of us and made adjustments accordingly. They were friendly, helpful, caring and fun. At several points in our journey we had some requests for things that weren't in the itinerary and they made sure that those requests were fulfilled. We couldn't have asked for better service. More that once we asked where we could buy a certain thing and they went out of their way to find the store where it could be procured, even after the tour for the day was done and they were off their time with us. Wonderful service. All of our drivers were excellent, friendly and helpful. They always had bottles of cold water for us when we returned to the vans, which was much appreciated. 

Our hotels were perfect. The hotel in Hanoi, our private boat in Ha Long Bay and the staff on board, the hotel in Hue, the boutique hotel in Hoi An, where we had a wonderful 2 day rest period to enjoy the beach and relax,  the resort in Saigon, which was luxury at it's best, and the hotel in Siem Reap, Cambodia were the perfect places to relax, rest and explore after our days of seeing the sights. They all had wonderful breakfasts and the staff of all of them were friendly, helpful and informative when we needed some advice. 

They also made getting our visas easy and painless, and arranged our internal flights and the flight to Cambodia with no problems. 

I highly recommend this travel company for any trip you are planning to Vietnam. Their service was outstanding and we have no complaints about anything they booked, recommended or suggested.