5 Days Essence of Mandalay Tour

My husband and I booked a fabulous 63-day tour through Vietnam and Laos with Indochina Tours. Our unbelievable travel assistants were Elena Dean and Kea. These two people made what would have been a standard tour into a FABULOUS tour.

They took the time to work with us on what we wanted, changed the itinerary to suit us, made all the arrangements and were able to put together fabulous guides and transportation that covered 2 months of travel. I would absolutely recommend Indochina Tour to others who are looking for a company that really listened to our requests.

This tour included temples, elephant sanctuaries, The Gibbon Experience, boat rides, creative art classes, food exploration, markets, beaches, forests, hiking, ziplining, in-country flights, 19 different hotels, planting rice experience, overnight luxury train accommodations, UNESCO world heritage sites, markets, and walking tours. Without a doubt, this company knows tours!

Great trip plan by Indochina Tour and the hotels are great as well as the guides. Would recommended to any couple for this trip.

We booked a custom 14 days tour across Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Amara and Helen made the booking experience so seemless and did a great job at crafting our tour. Amazing hotel stays and tours. The perfect combination of sightseeing and relaxing.

Our guides were all fantastic, always ready for us, really knowledgeable and very kind. I would recommend this tour operator. The only hiccup was a scheduling issue with our Halong Bay cruise, which we weren’t aware of until we landed from a 22 hour travel journey .

Although we had to adjust, Helen was very attentive and arranged some complimentary dinner and message for the miscommunication. It did not take away from the experience we had and would use Indochina again.

Ivy and Helen created a fantastic trip for me and my family to Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore. We can't say enough about how helpful and supportive they were all the way through. Our guides were also wonderful, and we would definitely recommend and use Indochina again.

We weren't sure if we would go through a company to plan our trip, but it made everything so smooth that I am so happy we did! We also looked into other tour companies, but we are so glad we went with Indochina because I can't imagine a better experience. Thank you to Helen, Ivy, and our excellent guides and drivers!

My partner and I had an absolutely amazing time on our tour planned with Indochina tour. Ivy and Kea took into account all of our preferences when planning our tour, which made it such a special experience.

In all of the different countries and cities that we visited, we always had a driver and tour guide ready to greet us and take us around to the different attractions. This simplified the experience for us as we did not have to worry about planning and logistics, but instead could just enjoy everything. Our guides and drivers were also so friendly and knowledgeable!

We have already been recommending this tour company to our friends and family as it truly was an incredible experience working with them!

We had Indochina customise a 21 day individual tour for us and I highly recommend it.

A family member actually said to me last night ‘how did you even go find out about some of those places?’ and I simply replied ‘our tour operator’.

We spent 21 days touring Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Our guides were professional, timely, knowledgeable, enthusiastic and just awesome! Hotels were spot on. Great locations, awesome facilities, attentive staff and some were full of character (in the best way). I usually spent so much time researching hotels and am very particular - these were better than I could have chosen.

Drivers were exceptional. Safe and always pressing a lovely cold water bottle into your hands.

A highlight of our trip was a visit to Free The Bears in Luang Prabang Laos. I have travelled quite a lot, and I feel this was one of my favourite ever travel experiences. This was added by our travel consultant Sreypov after I asked for some other experience to be excluded. However, animal ethics and welfare are important to me, so when I saw ‘bear sanctuary’ added I asked which one - and when Sreypov said Free The Bears I was very excited as they are a very ethical organisation. When I said this, Sreypov added Apopo - the mine detection rats - another bucket list for me! So our tour became very much about our interests. I actually wish I’d told Sreypov more about the things we liked to do and customised a bit more - as those customisations were the highlights!

I have so many friends asking me who organised my trip as they were following our adventures on Facebook and said our trip seemed one of the best they had seen.

Sreypov And Kea were both awesome to work with - so responsive to my emails - and there were a few!

They organised everything for us. Now, there are cheaper deals out there - but know this - this was a trip of a lifetime and there were NO HIDDEN EXTRAS. We barely spent a cent.

The lunches that were included were HUGE. A little too much food at times and at good quality restaurants and we got to try a nice variety of local cuisine. We did laugh and say our biggest expense was a cold alcoholic beverage at the end of the day! It was about the only thing not included (though two guides even bought us a surprise iced coconut coffee which was lovely!).

Whilst all internal flights were included (and oh wow, the guides meet you at arrivals, transport you to hotel and even check you in… but then they don’t drop you back at airport, they come in, check you in, and escort you all the way, it’s so lovely!) we did organise our own flights to Vietnam from Australia. And guess what did go wrong - those flights! However, when I was freaking out and worried, I reached out to Kea and she helped me through contacting our airline and fixing issue - even though it wasn’t her responsibility. Very grateful.

So yes, we had the trip of a lifetime and I highly recommend this company. We were very impressed with their care of us and professionalism.

We ran into some friends from home during our trip, they were doing a small group trip with another company and I feel we were having a much better time. It might cost more to have individual trip but that’s the difference between a holiday and a trip of a lifetime.

My tip - do tell them what you enjoy and have them customise the trip for you.

My sister and I travel together yearly. We carefully select a company we believe will create a tour that satisfies our needs by reading our texts carefully and asks searching questions to understand our interests and meet our needs.

In searching for a company we quickly realised that this company has The abilities and professional approach to bring our trip together with pleasure.

Indochina yours from Day 1 of contacting them was responsive, truly speaking I don't know when the staff of Indochina tours actually takes hours of a day off.

Kim arranged the itinerary first for us and then passed it over to Helen. Helen has an amazing team looking into each details a family visiting the Indochina belt for the first time would require/need to know.

She was so meticulous in detailing that she would specify the dress codes expected on each day of the tour as we were visiting themes and stupas.

The hotels and the food arranged by Indochina was great, all of their guides were knowledgeable and friendly.

I would surely recommend Indochina tours to all, it's a totally different way to visit the Indochina belt and see it through the eyes of the locals.