Hi Ha,

I’ve attached the feedback form for our trip to Vietnam.  We were very impressed with our guides and drivers…..three in particular went out of their way to help (including checking us into hotels, helping us with purchases, rescuing our 7 year old from a locked toilet, helping same 7 year old with allergic reaction and with altitude or travel sickness in Sapa.    It certainly made the trip much easier having the guides with us and the site visits organised in advance.

The only thing that could have been improved was having a picture of bikes and bit more info about bike riding for eco tour – as I mentioned we didn’t want our 7 year old riding with motorbikes and cars on the road as his road sense isn’t good enough.  However could have been picked up by vehicle and taken to a suitable starting spot as were the people who came from Da Nang.  The seats on the back of the bike would also have been acceptable (we don’t have those here so didn’t know about them).

Rob took the picture in for Newton Perrara – Newton has left the Water Corporation (lots of people have lost their jobs or taken voluntary redundancy).  However, a friend of Newton’s took the picture and will pass it on to him.  I don’t know Newton outside of work – he responded to my query on the work bulletin board about travel in Vietnam and recommendations.

We are really happy with the way our travel plans worked out – everything went smoothly, we experienced a lot and were able to ask for advice whenever we needed it.   I would suggest that maybe when people arrive it might be useful to know that ‘pho’ means noodles and maybe have a suggestion of somewhere close to the hotel where they could eat.  We couldn’t work out what shop was what when we arrived for either coffee or dinner!   We did eat at a place called King Cafe on our second night…..it had English and Vietnamese words on menu which helped and was really cheap and tasty food – 145,000vnd for the whole family!!!   There were a couple of other places in the same street that had English/Vietnamese menu.

The only thing that didn’t quite work as expected was the train to Sapa – we were not on the train specified and the guide arrived for the other train which arrived later than ours.  Therefore we had 30 minutes wait.  However, we trusted that he would be there so just waited – it wasn’t a problem.

Thank you for all you work – the communication and organisation was great and as far as we were concerned everything went smoothly and we had a fantastic holiday and fantastic, memorable experience.  We are all keen to return to see more some day!

Julie.

1. Lee (Mr Le) was going to send me some photo’s and me to him.  My email doesn’t receive attachments bigger than 5MB so not sure if he has tried and failed or if he hasn’t sent them yet.  I look forward to hearing from him.