Thick of the Jungle: One-Week Couples Tour to Vietnam

The tour was excellent. Our agent provided us with a very interesting and exciting tour.  All connections were made easily with flights, drivers and guides.  Our hotels were very nice, clean and in central locations with easy access to places of interest and shopping.  Some of the highlights on our tour include: riding through the busy streets of Hanoi on a cyclo;  the stay on board a wooden junk on Ha Long Bay - beautiful and relaxing; visits to the ancient town in Hoi An; cycling through the countryside of Hoi An with stops at the rice paddy fields where we helped plant and water vegetables, a ride on a water buffalo, riding in a 'Thung Chai" basket, and trying our hand at net fishing;  on to Ho Chi Minh where we did a night Vespa tour with stops at some of the favorite local eating spots and coffee shops;  a visit to the Cu Chi tunnels used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, and to wrap up our tour, three relaxing days at the beach on Phu Quoc Island. 

Thank you so much to to our agent and this company for making this a most memorable tour.

We booked a three-week trip to Vietnam with a side trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia, and the Angkor temple complex. We are three 60-something women who had never been to Southeast Asia before. Before we left, our travel company patiently helped us customize our trip, down to the last details, providing great advice along the way. Our trip started in Hanoi, and our guide was there at the airport to pick us up and take us to our hotel, even though it took longer than we expected to get our visas. The hotel they booked for us on the south shore of Hoan Kiem Lake, was lovely and it turned out to be a terrific location. Throughout the trip, which included stops in Ha Long Bay, Hue, Hoi An, Siem Reap and Ho Chi Minh City, we felt well taken care of, with great hotels throughout. And our guides were flexible enough to change our itineraries on the fly. For example, one of my companions fell and injured her leg in a market in Hoi An. We asked if we could rearrange the itinerary to accommodate a trip to a hospital clinic, and they happily obliged. And later they modified the schedule for my friend, so she could skip some of the more strenuous activities.

The trip itself was wonderful. We experienced the markets, the organic gardens, the temples and pagodas, the waterways and the food that makes Vietnam so unique and wonderful. All of our local guides were so helpful and willing to put up with our eccentricities.

The only glitch we had on the trip was when we arrived at the Siem Reap airport for our flight to Ho Chi Minh City. It turned out we did not have tickets on the flight. We called our travel company and immediately got a call back -- we would be met at the airport by a guide with tickets for the next flight out, and in the meantime he would take us to a lovely nearby hotel and buy us lunch. He also offered to get us a room if we wanted to shower or change clothes, but we just stayed in the restaurant overlooking the lovely swimming pool and sipped our mojitos, courtesy of of the company.

Also I should mention the value. Zicasso connected us with three travel agents who submitted proposals. This company was the only one that really understood our budget parameters and what we wanted to do within the budget. We felt the price was quite reasonable and were very happy with our trip.

The guides were good and very polite.some spoke good English. Wish we had an extra day in Saigon.

The hotels were to our standard except the hotel and spa in Phuv Quoc. Resturant there was very low quality with poor English speaking.

We spent an excellent 2 weeks in Vietnam, organized by this travel company.  I outlined a general itinerary of where I thought we wanted to go and what we wanted to see/do and they filled in the gaps...offering excellent suggestions for activities in each location and alternative places to visit based on expected weather, ease of travel, etc.  In the end we visited Hanoi, Ha Long Bay, Hoi An, Ho Chi Minh City and Phu Quoc.  Based on my input on the type of accommodations we wanted (4star, 5 star, etc), our travel company made suggestions for hotels and then made all of the reservations, including all of the internal flights.  In addition, our travel company arranged for a driver to take us between the airport and hotels and a tour guide/driver for visiting the cities.  I felt like they listened to what I wanted to do...but also were not afraid to suggest alternatives when they were concerned about the weather not being great (we visited at the tail end of the rainy season) or if we were trying to do too much in too short a time.  All throughout our trip our travel agent was in contact with us to make sure that all was ok

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.