I have looked after Alison’s travel requirements for many years. She and Jean are old friends who love to meet up in different parts of the world for their special holidays together, as Jean resides in Australia.
This time Vietnam and Cambodia was their chosen destination and Alison kindly reported back on how their trip went...
Once I had informed Gillian where we wanted to go for our latest holiday together, she set about taking care of all the logistics and arrangements in her usual patient and professional way.
We looked at several options, deciding that the tour offered by Scenic covered all the places we were keen to visit.
Our trip was absorbing from the moment we travelled through the hustle and bustle of Hanoi’s morning traffic shortly after our arrival to the incredible dining experience on our final night in Cambodia.
There were a pleasant 24 in our group with an ever-present guide who was extremely informative and looked after us well.
Jean and I had also included several optional tours in our itinerary along with the main one and our night trip around Ho Chi Minh City on the back of a scooter, stopping to eat delicious street food, was a major highlight.
That was one of several modes of transport we experienced, not only the perhaps more predictable planes, buses and river boats but a rickshaw ride around Hanoi and a journey by ox cart were firsts.
The people were friendly, helpful and smiling wherever we went. We had some clothes made to measure in Hoi An, loved listening to Cambodian children playing music on the deck of our boat, met countryside farmers and the sheer buzz of the cities we found enthralling.
The standard of the hotels throughout was excellent and the boats on both Halong Bay and the Mekong river were extremely comfortable and superior to any others witnessed.
In Cambodia we had approved local guides from whom we learned a lot, especially on the buses to and from the boat where they were unsupervised.
Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom were totally amazing. It was well worth getting up to see the sun rise over Angkor Wat from a hot air balloon!
We had a wonderful time and I would love to go back and explore more of Vietnam and Cambodia someday.
Thank you, Gillian for all your help, as always.
Alison Provan