Fascinating Flavors of Bangkok Tour

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.

Trip: My wife and I traveled to Bangkok, Chaing Mai, Phuket, and Hong Kong (for a long layover). Overall, the trip was excellent.  We cannot say enough about the places we visted:

1. Bangkok: While a large city, it has a special charm. You can see amazing historical Buddhist temples and then quickly transition to the local street vendors/markets and/or modern stores/hotels, etc. We stayed at the Mandarin Oriental (great location, awesome staff - would highly recommend). Peter was an amazing guide!!

2. Chaing Mai: Great city and more of the "local" Thailand relative to Bangkok. Great place to do elephant camps and we did an amazing private cooking class. Four Seasons hotel is a must! Hong, our guide, was great!!

3. Phuket:  Beautiful coastal town. Would highly recommend going to the Phi Phi islands via a private boat charter. Thanks to Arun, our amazing guide!!

4. Hong Kong: We were here for ~12 hour layover for our flight, but had a great time shopping and eating dinner overlooking the harbour. Joyce was incredible - - we did the "must sees" in 1/2 a day, plus got to sample the local flavor via some neighborhoods and a local tea shop

A special thanks to each one of our local guides  - - you all made a great trip absoulutely unforgettable!! Also, the local Thai people are so so nice and welcomed us everywhere we went.

Travel Company: We used this Thailand travel company and would highly, highly recommend using them. Their staff (special thanks to Vu and Chuong) were incredible - - they put together multiple alternatives for us to consider, provided "local" insights/opinions as we were deciding between options, and we very responsive to our every need. Most importantly, the guides we had were incredible in every locale - - they made the trip!! Every logisital aspect of the trip went off exactly as our travel agency said it would (and the itenerary was very informative/detailed). Perhaps the best way to summarize how much we thought of this company and the experiences they coordinated for us is that upon returing from our trip, we have already contacted the team about returning to SE Asia again next year....and there was absoulutely no question that we are going to use  to arrange everything for us again!!

Our trip to Thailand was an overwhelming success, thanks in more than a small way to our travel agency and this travel planner.  While, as can be expected, we did have a few bumps in the road, overall this “trip of a lifetime” was a huge success. 

Our main motivation in making this trip was to take our daughter, who was born in Bangkok, while we were part of the American Embassy family some 40+ years ago, to see and experience where she was born.  Result:  huge success!

So, here is my review of the Very Good and the very few hiccups.  As I know you are interested, let me start with the hiccups.

Problems with the schedule

The first was our arrival in Chiang Rai, where there was no one to meet us.  I called our travel planner.  Apparently, there was some confusion about our arrival time.  Our travel planner made contact with the guy who was to meet us, and he came as soon as possible.  We only had to wait about 45 minutes, which was not a huge problem at all.

We also learned during a subsequent interaction with our first guide in Chiangmai, that the Thai support for our tour had the wrong departure time for our flight from Chiangmai to Phuket.  Fortunately, we were able to get that set straight, so no problems ensued.

Aside from those two “problems,” the service at, to and from the airports was excellent. Of great importance was our initial arrival in Bangkok, where we were greeted as soon as we arrived and guided quite easily through the maze of Immigration and Customs, plus getting to the domestic terminal for our flight to Chiang Rai.  What a great relief to be so efficiently and pleasantly greeted and taken care of.  We were all very grateful and appreciative for being treated as VIPs.

Hotel Problem

All of our hotels were excellent…except for the hotel in Bangkok.  While the brick and mortar were attractive and entirely acceptable, that did not offset 1) the poor and nearly impersonal attitudes displayed by the ladies working in the reception area and 2) the incredible and powerful stench of mildew in the living area of the hotel.

When I checked in, I was given only one key for the each of our two rooms.  I wasn’t aware of that until we reached our rooms.  Stepping off the 4th floor elevator, we were met with a mildew smell, which nearly gagged us when we entered our rooms.  The power in the room requires a key to be inserted into a slot near the door, an arrangement I have encountered in other places outside the U.S., so we needed to use our room keys to turn on the power and, therefore, the AC.  However, with only one key per room, any time we would leave the room, off goes the power and AC.  In one room, the AC, when set at 23 degrees C or below, was cold enough to kill the mildew stench, but not in the other room (used by my daughter).  She gutted it out during our three nights there.  I went down to reception to get additional keys for our rooms…and had to leave a 200-baht deposit for each key. 

The good news is that we spent very little time in the rooms, basically only to sleep at night.

Aside from reception, the other staff were very gracious and helpful. The breakfast was fine.  However, those plusses were more than offset by the mildew.  I would not ever stay at that hotel again.

Now, that out of the way, onto the other 99% of the trip, which was fabulous!

We loved our hotels in both Chiang Rai and Chiangmai (The hotel in Chiang Rai had as good a cup of coffee as I have ever had!)  Facility, staff, breakfast, everything was wonderful.  And the hotel in Phuket was as nice a place as I have ever stayed.  Just fabulous!

Our Guides

Each guide you arranged for us was excellent.  I have no doubt had we tried to go it ourselves, the trips would have been much less enjoyable.

The Tours

Not even one disappointment.  In fact, just the opposite.  Not one moment of boredom!

Black House:  Did not exist when we lived in Bangkok 40 years ago.  Just amazing and a great tool for seeing important Thai history in Northern Thailand.   

White House:  Simply amazing.  Again, did not exist when we lived in Thailand.  Just an awesomely beautiful structure.

Doi Suthep:  We have a painting of Doi Suthep we brought back with us from Thailand 40 years ago.  This tour was like stepping into that painting.  How they managed to build that temple that far up the mountain is a story all by itself. 

Rickshaw Tour and Woratot Market:  Very enjoyable with much more than I expected.  One highlight was the visit to the Golden Temple.  Another, a visit to a lacquerware factory and shop.  Re the latter, we spent more than an hour there.  Turned out the owner was educated in England, enabling me to have a wonderful conversation with him about many different topics while my wife and daughter shopped.  Just a wonderful man.  And, of course, we took away more than a few things from his store at what I am sure was as good a price as possible.

The Elephant Camp:  I really did not expect much.  Boy was I wrong.  Just a wonderful outing, right down to “bathing” with our two elephant hosts.  The guide and the staff on site treated us like royalty.  My daughter and one staff member are already Facebook friends!  They could not have done more to make this outing great for us!

Cooking Class:  You MUST change this tour’s name.  Personally, I had no interest in it at all, yet it turned out to be my favorite experience of the entire two weeks.  When we were picked up at our hotel, we did not realize the driver and his assistant were members of our host family.  Then, when we arrived, the main host took over and led us through an incredible historical tour of the Raunkaew-Yanon family and business.  We were fortunate to have not only the number one son as our main host, but his father, who speaks wonder English, spent a lot of time with us.  The cooking was certainly fun and interesting, but this was not a cooking class.  Far more than that.  When we departed, we really felt like we had made friends, not just experienced a tour.  Just wonderful!

The Night Market:  We did get a chance to visit the famous Chiangmai Sunday Night Market.  For me, just another place to shop, but the ladies loved it.

Because of the problem with meeting us in Chiang Rai, our agent paid for us to have a wonderful Northern Thai Dinner while on a River Cruise on Saturday night!  Very nice of him to do so and very much appreciated by all three of us!

Phuket

While we made our own tour arrangements in Phuket (James Bond, Pi Pi Islands and City Tour), your travel arrangements were excellent, and I have already commented on the hotel.  I would strongly recommend to anyone going to Phuket to attend the Siam Niramit Show.  I was told it was a Thai dancing show.  Nope!  One of the most entertaining and informative big shows I have ever seen.  If they took it to Broadway, it would enjoy a long run!  Just fabulous!

Bangkok

What a change in 40 years!

It could be a U.S. city, with its skyline.  The tallest building when we lived in Bangkok was, I believe, 6 stories.  Sally and I just could not get over the difference.  In reality, while I like many things in Bangkok, I do not like Bangkok, itself, very much.

Our guide and driver were wonderful.  In fact, I would now call our guide our friend.  She really went out of her way to make our visit a great one.

While we certainly enjoyed visiting Wat Po, etc., our two highlights were, first, visiting the place where our daughter was born.  The Bangkok Nursing Home facility still exists, but is now a private school.  Right adjacent is the The Bangkok Nursing Hospital, which is breathtakingly beautiful, more so than many grand hotels I have been in.

The second was visiting the apartment building where my wife and I lived from 1975 to 1979.  Still there, almost unchanged!  The only one more thrilled than my wife and I was our daughter, who was so emotional as seeing her very first home!  What a great experience.

Summary

It was a good day, indeed, when we discovered this travel company and this agent.  We will soon place very positive reviews on Trip Advisor.  We are all very grateful to you for not only your knowledge and help, but your integrity.  We did not know you and had no idea how good or bad working with you might be.  I would recommend your services to anyone and will do so among our friends and associates.

It was an incredible journey and made memories for a lifetime for my entire family. Our Zicasso travel partner’s planning and selection of activities was the best. The guides were personable, funny, and professional. Our guide in Bangkok was so friendly, nice, and helpful. The night foodie tour was great. Our guide, a professor, was energetic and knew his way around. The hotel location was a bit on the wild side, but that was alright considering we didn't spend much time there.

In Chiang Mai, the elephant sanctuary, bamboo rafting, sights, and temples. Walking around the river just before the lantern festival was just as amazing!

Patong Beach in Phuket was rowdy, crazy, hectic, and just a typical beach for folks to visit and relax, but the kayaking at Phang Nga Bay was otherworldly. Serene, spiritual, and breathtaking. The trip was well planned, with great and knowledgeable guides. Lunch and dinner on the boat was perfect.

The tour went according to plan, without any problems or issues. It was perfect.