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Dear Tommy,
Ninette and I would like to congratulate you for putting together an absolutely unbelievable holiday package that we will never forget. One large Australian travel agent and airline company both cancelled our tours at the last moment for no apparent reason after holding our deposit for five months and left us in a real dilemma as we had already paid for the international airfares. We chose Luxury & Leisure Travel off the internet by chance. Your company did a fanstasic job to put together a holiday package within a few weeks to suit our needs. The hotels you chose were first class. The service, food and position of the rooms would have suited a movie star. All the guides were very entertaining and informative and all the drivers were very courteous and drove safely at all times. We would have no problem travelling with your company again and would recommend our friends to travel with your company. The little problem with the visa was entirely our fault as we should have applied for a multiple entry instead of a single entry, but we will put that down to experience and we will know next time. Touring Vietnam and Cambodia with your company was an absolutley 10 out of 10 experience.
WELL DONE LUXURY & LEISURE TRAVEL AND BAYON TOURS
Best and kindest regards
Robert & Ninette Crockett from Sydney, Australia (email: ...optusnet.com.au)
Signatures Of Indochina in January 2008
 P.S. We wish you and your family all the best for the Tet celebrations

Dear Tommy, Thank you very much for your wonderful trip that you had organized for us to Vietnam and Cambodia. We enjoyed the trip very much.  We have been very pleased.  Thank you for sending Mr. Hai to meet us after the mix up with connections.  He is a very good guide.  Mr. Ming is an excellent driver as well

Lois Pesola, Anthony Pesola and Katherine Pesola

16146 Lake Side Ave SE Prior Lake, USA

Treasures of Indochina in Dec 2007

Dear Tommy,
 

Michael and Joel are Much better and the hospital was very good. Vu was absolutely fantastic. He did a really great job for us in Saigon!! Despite the accidents in Phu Quoc we are very happy with our trip and your team. Thank you very much for all your help. We will come back to Vietnam and yes we recommend you strongly.

Robert Fitzpatrick & family
Pritzker Director, Museum of Contemporary Art
220 East Chicago Avenue, Chicago, Illinois  60611, USA

Jewels of Indochina starting from the 29th of Dec until 12th of Jan 2008

Dear Tommy,
 

We are back home again. We had a wonderful tour through Vietnam and to Siem Reap. Your tour planning and organization was absolutely perfect. The guides and drivers in the different towns we visited were excellent and very helpful.  We will recommend you to our friends. Thank you very much !

Kind regards

Sigrid an Dr. Alfred Jensen from Hattingen, Germany

Treasures of Indochina in November 2007

Good morning Tommy,
 
Many thanks for your kind email and yes, indeed, we are back in the land of sand and happy to unpack our rucksacks and see the dogs again!
 
The tour programme, as booked through your company was absolutely PERFECT.  What I particularly appreciated, in order of importance, was
1.  your kindness and willingness to make changes to our programme as we went along.  ( Amended train/flight bookings, amended hotel booking in Sapa due to trekking changes).  That really separates the amateurs from the professionals and you did a fantastic job in keeping us happy all the time. Most appreciated was the dayroom you organized for us at the last minute in Hanoi due to the Vietnam airlines flight delay - I was very impressed and it made all the difference! Thank you.
2.  Time keeping by your guides & drivers - they were always there before the appointed time, were well prepared, extremely pleasant company, had lots of good stories to tell, and of course were great facilitators.  Perfect!  In Particular I am thinking of Guide Njan in Sapa, Guide Hai Hai in Hanoi - they stand out and please pass our personal thanks to them.
3.  It was very reassuring to know that we felt that we could always contact you - not that we needed to - whatever time of day.
4.  We feel that we got value for money.  The tour programme was exactly what we had expected and we certainly will promote your services to any of our friends who will be traveling your way.
 
As regards the content of the sightseeing in every city - superb.  Places visited were appropriate, the guides let us spend as long or as short as we wished, no guides ever pushed us to buy items in tourist shops - although we were offered the chance.  Boat trips worked perfectly. Border crossing into Cambodia was efficient.
Hotel Accommodation: Superb superior room at the Metropole on the way in - a bit less nice on the way out as we had a dark standard room and they were renovating the hotel at that stage - but that didnt matter for only 1 night.  Hanoi Hotel  Hoa Binh Palace was pleasant enough with really nice staff.  Sapa - well, the Sapa Victoria was just the best.  Food was great, location superb, staff excellent, beautiful rooms, a true delight!  One complaint : Extortionate and inefficient laundry service considering that labour costs there should be absolutely minimal.  I paid USD70 for a few pieces of laundry and did not feel that the washing was even cleaned properly.  These are European prices but certainly not with European standards! You may wish to pass this comment on to them. The Victoria Hotel Chau Doc - although it is the best hotel there, seems a bit tired and dated, especailly after having experienced the sleek and efficient Sapa Victoria.  The food was great but I did complain to the Manager about the less than poor massage my son and I endured.  To his credit however, the GM of the hotel could not have done more to make things good.  I think the staff called him in outside of his duty time to deal with my complaint, he was most apologetic, did not charge us for the massage and all is well that ends well.  As they say: a complaint turned around makes for an even more loyal customer next time round and if ever in Chau Doc we'd happily go there again.  The hotel Juliana Phnom Penh  (my choice of hotel) was extremely poor.  The lobby smelled dank and musty, the food was over-priced and unappetizing, the rooms and pool were OK but seriously, the poolman guarded his towels with a ferocity that you would think they were made of gold and throughout the whole hotel every piece of furniture has little pieces of carpet stuck underneath it to stop it from scratching the already sad looking floor.  Truly a disaster. Please dissuade people from going there.  We subsequently looked at the rooms and also ate at a place called the Foreign Correspondents Club or FCC as it is affectionately known in Phnom Penh.  Rack rates there are USD 75 for a double per night and it is PERFECT for European travellers.  One thing though : PP seems to be full of beggars who wheel their disabled family members around on carts and trolleys and they all seem to hang out either outside the FCC or the hilltop mountain temple in PP - sorry I forgot the name.
Cambodia :  Very different experience than Vietnam and a lot more challenging.  We preferred Vietnam in every way but that is just a personal choice.  The guide in Phnom Penh, Mr Ra was very difficult to understand but he was a kindly gentleman and he did try his best.  I certainly wish him well as he seems to have had a very hard life.  ( All we wanted was to be with Njan or Hai Hai !!) The tour operator in PP was efficient, perfect driver, on time, polite, well informed. 
Complaints:  Very few!  On the boat from Chau Doc to Phnom Penh the Victoria Hotel provided a snack of fruit and two miniscule biscuits. From what I could see no one touched the unpeeled fruit - westerners generally wouldn't eat grapes or apples unwashed or unpeeled for fear of becoming ill.  On such a long ( 6-7 hour) journey, far better to perhaps offer a hot cup of tea/coffee and a hearty sandwich or some real cake/biscuits.  But that is only a small suggestions.

Train journey from Sapa to Hanoi.  The Hotel Victoria had printed notices that advised that there would be a restaurant car attached to the train on a Thursday evening.  We had a particular cause to celebrate that evening and wanted to dine in style on board the train.  Only one problem! No restaurant car that night.  No one on the train seemed to have heard of dining cars on that train anyway.  Please advise the Sapa Victoria of this.
 
Tommy, sorry this is such a long account.  Hopefully I am not boring you to death.  Am very happy for you to publish anything or everything I said on the web.
 
Lastly, please once again thank your wonderful team!  Especially also the kind lady from your office - sorry I forgot her name! - who twice had to get up so very early to take us to and meet us from the train! Thank you also to you.
 
Great Holiday!  Many thanks and best regards,
Ria, Adrian and Mark EPPS (German & British citizens living in Qatar)

(Email is confidential and provided upon request) 

We had booked a trip with you through a tour operator in Cape Town, South Africa and were so happy with your excellent service. We have just sent our thanks to our travel agent for their very good connection with a professional partner like you. I really appreciated the way you did take care of senior travelers like us throughout the trip. Keep up your great service, you will be surely on the move.

Mr. B Robert from Cape Town, South Africa

(A Glance of  Indochina from 10 April to 22 April 2007)

If you may need more further testimonial statements, we can provide you upon request.

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