Bangkok Senior Vacation: Serene City Highlights

Overall, it was a great vacation and we all enjoyed it very much. Thailand is a beautiful country with very friendly people, a deep and rich culture and awesome food!

When we set out to book our family vacation to Thailand, at first we were overwhelmed by the choices and the planning. Which cities to visit ? What are the tours ? Where do we stay ? Flight travel etc. Luckily, I came across Zicasso – a new way to book travel – that connects you with a travel advisor who has local knowledge of the place you want to go. This is how I got referred to our tour planner and travel team.

The travel team really helped us experience Thailand with local guides who know the place well.

First of all, our tour planner is awesome – she and the travel team helped us plan our trip – everything from airline, to hotels to the day by day itinerary and travel insurance. Even before we left on the trip, we felt both prepared and excited by the program. The app is amazing – it feels great to have your complete itinerary including local tips around guides, phone numbers, flight details all available in the app when you need it. Our agent gave us many good choices for local tours and helped us pick the itinerary that best suited our family.

Flights – The tour planner connected us with an airline which did a great job with our flights. We flew from Vancouver and within Thailand. The flights were great, good service and generally on time.

Hotels – the hotel in Bangkok was great. We got rooms on a high floor overlooking the Chao Praya river – amazing views! The best part was seeing the fireworks display on the Chao Praya river for the New Year. The hotel was packed since it is high season for tourists and yet we got good service overall. In Chiang Mai, we stayed at a hotel. It is a quaint, homely place to stay and within walking distance to local markets. A couple downsides – lots of mosquitoes in Chiang Mai – the hotel does a mosquito spray in the evening sometimes and we had to be out of our rooms for an hour in the evening for that. The Wi-Fi also was not great. They serve a great buffet breakfast in the morning.

Local guides – Chatcha in Bangkok and Oil in Chiang Mai – were awesome! They were very flexible with our family needs, knew the local conditions well and really helped us get the most out of each day in Thailand. Having a guide and vehicle exclusively for our family needs each day was amazing! The pickup and drop-offs at the airports were great and both our guides helped us all the way from check in to the point of entry into security. Both guides had extensive knowledge of the history of Thailand and the local tours and this helped us understand things better. Finally, the guides helped us experience the amazing Thai food – including in local places and street food. We felt safe wherever we ate and always had bottled water available for our needs.

Tours – the original tours planned had more temples in the program. After a couple, we decided to improvise and change things up which our local guides helped with a lot. We added an Elephant camp tour at the last minute – this turned out to be the highlight of the entire trip for our kids (and us!). I did not know that Elephants can paint and seeing the Elephants paint some great pictures is an experience we will never forget! For the temples, there is a dress code – our guides helped us buy elephant pants where needed so we could go in. The Doi Suthep temple in Chiang Mai is a must see – you need to climb 300+ steps to get to the top – stunning temple and great views of Chiang Mai city. We loved the boat rides – the long tail boat ride in Thonburi and near the Damnoen Saduak Floating Market were super fun! Lots of history – if you like that, the Ayutthaya day trip is worth it. The Jim Thompson house in Bangkok is a short tour but very interesting and well worth it.

Food - always lots of food choices – a noodle dish restaurant in Chiang Mai is soooo good! Loved the foodie tour with street food in Thonburi, the floating market and Chatuchak market. Tom Kah soup, Mangoes, Coconut pancakes and of course Phad Thai, Fried rice, sticky rice – if you love great food, Thailand is like heaven!

Shopping – lots of great shopping opportunities and we bought many interesting things for the house. Its good to have local currency for small purchases. We loved the shopping at Chatuchak market, floating market and the malls – MBK and Siam Paragon.

This is a long overdue review. We traveled to different areas of Thailand for 2 weeks at the end of January and beginning of February 2018. After being matched with this travel company, our agent made the process of planning this vacation very simple. He responded quickly to questions, was available through text, email, and phone, and put together a wonderful itinerary for us. We visited Bangkok, Kanchanaburi, Chiang Mai, and Koh Lanta, which were all unique and amazing in their own respects. What we were really impressed with is that our agent and his team made sure that someone was always waiting for us at our next stop, whether it was someone to pick us up at the airport or a tour guide waiting for us at our hotel. Unfortunately, there was one issue with our airplane tickets being accidentally booked incorrectly, but after getting on the phone with our agent, we were able to resolve it quickly and were able to continue on to Krabi as planned. I must say my fiancé and I were really impressed with the quality of the tours that were arranged for us by this travel agent. I cannot say enough about how much I absolutely adored our tour guide in Bangkok. Kanchanaburi was beautiful and my most favorite part was waking up to the sound of the flowing river on our jungle raft in the morning. We also loved the cooking class with a local Lanna family and visiting the Elephant Sanctuary in Chiang Mai and the Scuba Dive in Koh Lanta. The hotel was a spectacular treat in Koh Lanta. Our agent booked us a beachfront suite that was literally steps from the hotel's private beach front, and the perfect place to get engaged in Thailand.  This was an amazing unforgettable trip for the both of us and we cannot thank this travel company enough. Our travel agent and his team made this trip stress-free and wonderful. I would use his company again in a heartbeat and encourage anyone who is planning a trip to Thailand to utilize them as well. I promise you will not be disappointed! Thank you so much to our agent and the travel company's team. 

I have to say without a doubt a trip of a lifetime.  The trip and schedule that was worked out with our travel agency worked perfectly and met our every request from fantastic and comfortable lodging, to seamless transportation and fantastic experiences of historic culture, sites, food and wonderful people. 

Drivers, Guides and excursions:Our drivers and vans were exceptional!  They took care to ensure we had cool towels after long hot treks and always a fresh supply of water.  The guides even purchased local fruits from vendors to supply some on the road snacks.  The vans were quite comfortable and the 6 hour drives in the country sides were broken up by stops to local markets or food stands / restaurants. 

Our guide from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi to Sukhothai was great, always providing insights into local customs and culture.  We originally had scheduled a trip to the Erawan Falls but after a very hot day at hell fire pass and our guide explaining that the trek to the waterfalls would mostly be similar in the sense that it would be extremely hot and the waterfalls were currently dry, he suggested that a river rafting trip might be better…and it was spectacular. Our guide was great about letting us know what was coming next, when we would have free time and even suggested restaurants for dinner.  Also his Lunch selections when we were on the road were some of the best local restaurants.  He took us to one lunch place right outside of Sukhothai that was what he called the noodle bowl place that served 4 different colored noodles with a soup broth full of different seafood items that was really spectacular.  The whole family agreed it was one of our best meals….and very local!

Our guide from Sukhothai to Chiang Mai was also great and very friendly.  After hearing that I was looking for a couple of specific items she arranged a tuk tuk during our free time to take us to some local shops to purchase the very items I was looking for and gave us great suggestions for the night markets and areas to eat dinner.

We requested proposals from 7 different providers.  After evaluating each proposal on cost and quality we selected this travel agency.  Their price was in the middle of the price range.  However we judged their value to be the best considering the creativity and quality of the activities proposed as well as the included hotels and amenities.

Our request for proposal included our age, mobility situation. desired trip length and countries to be visited.  We visited Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar.  We provided our international flights to Phnom Penh and home from Yangon.  Our travel agency provided flights internal to SE Asia.  We were met promptly at each airport by a driver if we were just going to our hotel or driver and guide if sightseeing or activities were involved.  The guides handled all of our arrangements and everything went like clock-work.  They got the tickets, got us in the right lines or to the right door so that all we had to do was enjoy ourselves. Despite all the activities and sightseeing we still had time to enjoy our hotels and rest.

The activities were first-class:  acrobatic circus in Siem Reap, dinner and Thai dance show in Bangkok, floating market in Kanchanaburi, ride on the death train on the River Kwai, boat tour on the golden triangle river,  cooking class and dinner with a local family near Chiang Mai, two night luxury riverboat cruise from Mandalay to Bagan, sunrise balloon ride over Bagan, longtail boat tour around villages on Inle Lake and high tea at the old colonial hotel in Yangon.  All of these activities were wonderful and we will never forget them.

The hotels were all luxurious and had local flavor.  All of the rooms were spacious and the service excellent.  We spent the night in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Bangkok, Kanchanaburi, Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, Mandalay, Bagan and Yangon.  We have had several river boat trips but our river boat trip from Mandalay to Bagan surpassed it with more spacious cabins and baths, better public spaces and better service.

Our travel agent worked with us back and forth promptly as we fine tuned our itinerary.  He made recommendations on tipping, currency and local customs such that the entire trip went smoothly and thus maximized our enjoyment of these wonderful countries.  I cannot recommend this agent and his company high enough to reflect our satisfaction with the trip he arranged.

I can’t imagine going to Thailand without this Travel Company: they gave us a beautiful, tailor-made itinerary with no-stress travel from beginning to end. At the outset, our decision to use Zicasso for this trip was based on the following factors: 1) previous amazing experience booking/planning our honeymoon, 2) loved ones’ stories of travel difficulties in Thailand, and 3) our confidence in the travel planner’s (owner and founder, Travel Company) abilities and expertise. Additionally, my husband and I have very demanding careers with very little personal time; thus, planning a Thailand itinerary that incorporated every city and activity we desired seemed like a gargantuan task. 

Of those we spoke to, our travel planner was most exceptional, and his own experiences of once being a newcomer in Thailand shaped his unique perspective on must-see sights and worthwhile adventures. Our planner spent a great deal of time speaking to us one-on-one by phone as he planned the trip, and stayed available to us throughout our time in Thailand by an app. Our trip was 14-days (18 days counting travel), and involved many transfers by air, car, boat, and bus. The planner advised us on what to book, and even helped us decide the cities and length of time spent in each city. Our itinerary incorporated 3 nights in Chiang Mai, 5 nights in Krabi, 4 nights in Bangkok (6 if you count the first and last nights), and 2 nights in Kanchanaburi. Our travel planner booked every single activity, hotel, and car, bus, boat, and flight for us: from in-country domestic flights to making dinner reservations for us. For Krabi, I wanted a jacuzzi villa at a beautiful resort only accessible by boat and he secured it for us! The most difficult hotel to book was the floating villa on the River Kwai; it’s considered one of the most beautiful floating hotels in the world, so it was a high-priority and somewhat difficult but our planner did it! 

Since I am vegetarian, the travel planner went above-and-beyond to book me vegetarian meals on every domestic flight and for every activity. Every guide and/or driver was made aware of the vegetarian issue, and--in the end--it was as if I had more [vegetarian] food than the meat-eaters! I’ve never felt so accepted and included as I did on this trip. I’ve been to countries where these accommodations were not fully provided by guides/agents; thankfully, these struggles have long been “history” since we started booking with Zicasso!

Even if he was out of the office, our planner had us connected with his other team members, and every guide and driver was provided our contact and vice versa. For our time in Kanchanaburi, we were booked an amazing guide who was with us from pick-up to drop-off (3 days!) for all of our Kanchanaburi activities. I had a concerning abrasion after a fall in Krabi, and our guide took us to a hospital, translated for us, and even coordinated with the doctors to expedite our clinic visit.

We can’t imagine our trip without this Travel Company, and the fabulously flawless care provided by the travel planner and his team. Our planner’s dedication to perfectionism and seamlessness shines through how he runs the company, and we are grateful that we were matched up with them. For anyone on the fence, the extra funds required to book a comprehensive package really are worth it for Thailand. Especially if you want to travel outside of the city you fly into, hiring a team like this company is absolutely imperative if you want confidence and trust in those transporting you and guiding you through each city.