Hello Vy,

How are you going? It was lovely to meet you and thank you for our lovely gifts, they were much appreciated.

We have all arrived home safe and well after a most memorable and enjoyable holiday. We cannot thank you enough for all the organising you did. All the hotels were wonderful, and central so we could easily access the cities and were all of an excellent standard. The staff at the hotels were also very nice and very friendly. Special mention to the staff at the La Siesta Hotel who looked after us extremely well.

The guides you supplied were all so very knowledgable about each of their areas and very helpful and friendly - especially the central guide Mr Handsome (who I thing is Mr Leung?!! Our drivers all did a great job too.

We have no hesitation in recommending Tonkin Voyage Travel and you Vy to everyone here and will also do reviews on trip advisor (which is how I found you). If you would like to give me the name of your supervisor I would be happy to write of my experience - or feel free to pass this email on.

Thank you once again, you have given us a trip which will always have very happy and fond memories.

Best wishes

Jenni

JENNIFER group x8Pax From Vietnam to Angkor Temples 12 Days from 03 until 14 May 2019

Hello Ms Vy,

Sorry it has taken me so long to respond.  I wanted to thank you so much for all of your help with planning our holiday.  As you know, I was actually the only person in my family that wanted to come to Vietnam, and the half way though the holiday everyone was having such a good time they all wanted to come back - but this time during winter, it was so hot!  My husband had a great holiday and relaxed a lot from his stressful job. The kids saw so many interesting sites and learnt so much about your culture and tasted so many different foods.  It was exactly the holiday I wanted for my family.

Specifically about the hotels - they were all excellent.  Very clean, staff very nice and accommodative and very luxurious.  We all especially enjoyed Hoi An La Siesta, and the rooftop pool in Saigon.

With regards the tours, we very much enjoyed all of the tours, but sometimes the kids were tired, and couldn’t tour the whole day.  We thought it might be better if you book another tour with kids like ours, it might be worthwhile to offer people the option of finishing tours after lunch - say 2pm, so that they can go back to the hotel and relax a bit, rather than touring all of the time.  The kids got affected by the heat a lot, as they are not used to it.  I know it is a fine balance between doing as much as possible and getting some relax time, so maybe its worthwhile to ask clients how they like to travel to help them plan their itinerary.

The guides and drivers were all so excellent.  Mr Lam in Saigon had a great sense of humour and was very good with the children.  Ms Linh in Hoi An also very good with the kids, taught them lots of Vietnamese customs and took us to some local places for lunch.  These were excellent.  She also brought to me some ginger tea when I was sick and we were very appreciative.  Our last guide Lily was also fantastic, getting the kids some travel sickness pills, and changing some of the menus for us so that my son could eat more pork ribs - his favourite.

It was the guides and drivers, always being there, on time, knowing everything, where to go what to do, made everyone feel very safe comfortable and relaxed.  Even on the last day when the driver came early to take us to the airport, we were very appreciative.

We haven’t stopped talking about our holiday, and would like to come back to Saigon, Hue, Hoi An and Sapa, - so I will definitely be contacting you about this in the future.

I will definitely recommend your travel agency, your service was so excellent also.  Very patient with all of the changes that I had to make, very prompt responses.

Thank you so much!

Best wishes to you.

Kym

KYM group x5
From Southern to Northern Vietnam 15 Days from 12 until 26 Apr 2019

Dear Vy,

Yes ... we arrived home on Friday morning about 30 hours after our pickup from Palm Garden resort ... so we were very tired and it took a couple of days for our heads and bodies to be synchronised again!

All is well now and we have only great memories of our trip and I've already spent a few hours sorting out the hundreds of photos we took with camera and phones. Some of the very best of these were taken by our guides.

The itinerary was excellent and well paced and we got a brilliant reception at all the hotels and Halong Cruise, with our anniversary mentioned and gifts of fruit and wine. And superb upgrades on the Cruise and at Palm Garden Resort!

The only hotel that didn't mention it was the Villa Santi in Luang Prabang. But please don't take this as a criticism !.... it's just for completion of feedback, we had a really nice room there!

Saigon and Can Tho:
 It was good to have the morning free after our arrival and we had a great tour in the afternoon with Tony as our guide. He was very good.
Tam was our guide and chef for Cu Chi and our cooking class. That was such a fun day and Tam was just amazing ... so enthusiastic and knowledgeable. The driver was excellent also.
The Silverland Sakyo is a lovely hotel in a great location.!
The West Hotel in Can Tho was beautiful and our bed was festooned with flowers and a towel sculpture. Special mention to Jeanne! But breakfast was disappointing.
Hue, our guide, was teriffic and we enjoyed our tours with him.

Siem Riep:
Probably the most memorable location of our trip. We were blown away by our visits to the various Temple groups.
Our guide here, Kom, was absolutely amazing. Definitely the best guide of the trip ... from his knowledge and his care for us .... also have to to mention the driver Smaja (I think)
Kom was so knowledgeable and passionate about the temples and their amazing history. We learned so much from him and he took such excellent pictures which we will treasure.
Hotel Saem Siem Riep was also excellent and we enjoyed the Apsara Dance Show too.

Luang Prabang:
It was nice and unexpected to be met at the airport by our guide KL and driver Song when we arrived.
The trek next day was a real challenge at 13km in the heat and humidiity but we were so pleased we accomplished it and  it was great to see the Hmong and Khmu villages and the waterfalls at the end of the trip. Our guide here was KL and we would rate him only 7/10, mostly because he was constantly distracted and on his phone.
The following day's cruise "Nava Mekong Cruise" was really enjoyable and interesting.

Hanoi
Chien, our guide, was superb with a great sense of humour and anxious to inform us as much as possible. We thoroughly enjoyed our time with him! He went out of his way with little extras for us which we really appreciated and it was fun to be with him. We also very much enjoyed meeting with you in the Tonkin office! Also, a great driver with Chien.
As I told you, our one regret is not having allowed an extra night in Hanoi!
And by the way, lunch at Home Mộc restaurant was top class.

Halong Bay:
We were completely blown away by the reception on the boat. We were shown to the best cabin and another display of flowers and towel sculpture.
Philip, the Cruise Director, was so kind to us. Halong Bay was. of course, amazing..... and the surprise cake and fireworks at dinner really topped it all.
It was a great evening and thanks so much to you for your input!
The only negative was regarding the boat trip to the cave. We were brought by boat to a pier to be transferred to the bamboo boats to visit the cave. There was total chaos on the pier with hundreds of people pushing and jostling and we had to wait over 30 minutes to get onto the bamboo boat. Irene felt very uncomfortable during this time.

Hoi An:
The second negative we have to report for the whole trip: We were not at all happy with the driver of our transfer from the Da Nang airport to the Palm Garden Resort. Sorry we haven't got his name but his driving was (to us) erratic and aggressive and left us feeling nervous on the relatively short transfer!
Our guide next day took us on a very enjoyable walking tour of Hoi An. An excellent guide, and we really enjoyed trying to make lanterns and the lunch we had in the market. Sorry, but I've mislaid his name. We thought Hoi An was fascinating even though it was crowded with tourists (as you had told us!)

Palm Garden Resort:
We really enjoyed our six nights here ... especially as we were upgraded to a beautiful bungalow .... thanks again to you Vy! It was nice to get a few lazy days before going home.

In Summary:
We were totally satisfied with our trip and the communications and input from Tonkin and would absolutely have no hesitation in recommending Tonkin (and Vy!)
We're very happy to be used as a reference for prospective travellers. and for Tonkin to use this review if they wish..

Dear Vy, We will certainly  recommend you and Tonkin to any of our friends who might be planning a trip to Indochina. and maybe we'll come again for the 50th!!
At the outset I said this was to be a very special anniversary trip for us and I'm delighted to say it far exceeded our expectations!

Thanks so much for all your help.
Regards and best wishes
John and Irene ☺

COLLINS group x2
Indochina Odyssey 20 Days from 09 until 28 Mar 2019

Jennifer,

Overall, it was great. Everything went very smoothly.  Below are some specific comments.
Hanoi. The hotel in Hanoi was terrific. It was our favorite hotel of the trip. We liked our guide, who was a very nice person although he could’ve provided more information about the country and the sites we were visiting.
Halong (spelling?) harbor. This was another highlight of the trip. The ship was superb. The staff was great, the room was excellent and the food was very good. Needless to say the scenery was spectacular.

Hue/Hoi An.   The guide we had here was fine, but not as good as the other two guides we had. The hotels were fine, although we were somewhat disappointed in our room in Hoi An, which was far from the beach and the pool.

One of the highlights of this part of the trip was the basket boats. Our guide on the boat was terrific — charming and a lot of fun. I’d recommend you use him as much as possible.
Ho Chi Minh City.  Our guide in the city was terrific. We were with her for two days, and enjoyed every minute of it. She was clearly the best of the three guides we had and we strongly recommend you use her whenever possible.

As for the sites, we very much enjoyed the Mekong Delta. Our hotel was very nice, and well located, though we would have preferred a room that looked out onto the street.
As I said, overall the trip was great. All of our drivers were very good, and you were very responsive throughout the trip. (Among other things, we appreciated the gifts and the cake.) We would definitely recommend Tonkin Travel to others.

Best,
Jay

JAY group x2
Spirit Of Vietnam South Bound 13 Days from 2 Mar until 14 Mar 2019

Dear Jennifer,
Firstly let me thank you for the excellent support provided by yourself all through the trip both in Vietnam and Cambodia.
We had a very enjoyable trip, where our time  was very well organized so that we had could do the most in the limited time we had.
The hotels were very good with good services .
The restaurants organized by you were good and we enjoyed all the local cuisine very much.
The guides who  were assigned to us were very knowledgeable and they took every effort to give all the historical perspectives and give us all help and guidance during the trip.
Overall, all the sites , cruises,  travels organized were excellent and thank you once again for excellent Service given..
Thanking You,
Kind regards

V P Manohar
Nalini Manohar

MANOHAR group x2
Essence Of Vietnam & Cambodia 15 Days from 1 Mar until 15 Mar 2019