Deirdre Kriz
feedback on our trip

We were in Vietnam for 2 weeks and had TNK travel organize our accommodation and tours for us. From the very start everything went like clockwork. The guides and drivers they provided for us were very friendly and well informed. Not once were we ever late for a plane or boat, which there was many of both. They made our holiday to Vietnam very stress free and most enjoyable. I would reccommend this company to all I know who will be travelling to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

The trip was perfect.

robert fitzpatrick
www.perfect4u.com

just wanted to say what a great website. we at perfect4u.com are looking for holidays to sell for our clients and Vietnam is such a wonderful place to visit, so perfect4u and the people are so friendly.

thanks

rob and team
perfect4u

Anne and Jonathan
Stern Itinerary March

Dear Hang,

This is just a short note to thank you for all the effort you put into making our trip to Vietnam enjoyable. We were all most impressed with the efficiency of the transport arrangements, the friendliness of the guides and the helpfulness of the hotel staff where ever we stayed.The whole trip went very
efficiently and we must commend you highly. We loved Vietnam.The staff at the hotel in Hanoi were fantastic and I would highly recommend it.I did think that it may be helpful for you to know about the only 2 things that may have been able to be avoided:
1. The hotel at Hoi An (the Hoi An Hotel) was very big and very noisy as a result of the many tour groups that were staying there. We were given a room in the downstairs foyer, with the rubbish collection area outside our window and found this room very noisy through out the night. Also the bathrooms have limited hot water facilities, permitting only one very small bath to be run before the hot water runs out. Despite the fact that the room itself was nice, and the staff and food good, I would not chose to stay there again.
2. Another suggestion is that if people wish to visit Sapa, and stay in a home stay, accommodation in the home stay should not be arranged for the first night, as the train trip is very noisy and bumpy so that one doesn’t get much sleep. Our itinerary planned that on arrival in Sapa we should go to our proposed hotel to have breakfast and a shower. This would have been nice. But this didn’t happen as we were not staying at the hotel that night, and were not given the choice by the guide. Instead we were taken to a restaurant for 2-3 hours, before starting on our tour of the villages. We were not at all happy about sitting in a restaurant for 3 hours as we were all cold, tired and dirty. The weather was unfortunately awful – freezing cold. Obviously the weather could not be foreseen when we planned the itinerary, but the icy weather didn’t help things. I think that the guide should have contacted you for your suggestions when he realised how bad the weather would be.
I hope that you find these suggestions helpful. Despite the bad weather in the north with your help we had a lovely trip and really appreciated your efforts to put the Halong Bay disappointment right.
We will definitely be travelling with you again if we decide to revisit Asia, and will be recommending your company (and you) to friends who wish to visit your area.

Thank you again.
Regards

Michelle Davis
Feedback

I was interested in visiting Vietnam and found TNK Travel through a search engine. I was a little sceptical about booking online as sometimes you do not get what you paid for. My experience with TNK Travel exceeded my expectations. I was met by our lovely tour guide Nhy in Hochiminh city and she absolutely looked after us. The holiday was very relaxing and experienced with ease. I travelled from HCMC - Hanoi and every experience with the guides and drivers were great.

I would very much recommend TNK Travel. Vietnam is a wonderful place to visit and the people are lovely.

The tour I experienced was good value for money.

Michelle Davis - Sydney, Australia

Annikki and Pierre
Indochina Customized Tour ( Nov 11th 06 ) /Mr. Pierre Herbert / Tour Report from Pierre

Hello Mr Dac Danh,

Annikki and I hope you are very well and we wish you, according to our western calendar, a very Happy New Year for 2007 and a lot of success for TNK Travel.

We came well home thru Malaysia and have been very busy since. But we promissed you a short report and comments on our beautiful trip thru your country and the two neighboring ones. Here it is:

First we must thank you again for a well organized tour, showing many highlights. Also, we have to confirm that the tour guides you selected for us have been very punctual, very friendly and had sufficient knowledge of the place and customs to make us enjoy every day.

Nhi for the Mekong Delta, Heng for Phnom Penh, Phin Borey for Siem Reap, "Jack"for Houen Xai to Loang Prabang, Khamtam in Vientiane, Tranh in Hanoi, Thinh in Lao Cai, Huy in Hue and Tong in Ho Chi Minh City, all have been doing an excellent job.Some were very knowledgeable in history like Phin Borey and Huy, which is always very appreciated by us.

The hotels were confortable enough. Luxury is not what we wanted but being in a genuine local environment. But in Chau Doc, the Ben Da Nui Sam Resort was situated in front of the loudspeaker broadcasting political news at night and early in the morning, which made resting impossible. In the early morning, at breakfast, the staff was bringing a very frugal breakfast and refused to bring a second cup of coffee...That hotel we cannot recommend. In Vientiane, the Lane Xang hotel is old and we got a small, rundown room. We called the agent Max and he rectified for a Superior room. In Ha Noi, the Army Hotel was OK but a bit "cold"! All hotel were situated at convenient distance from points of interest, so that was a plus.
We can especially recommend the Asia Hotel in Hue for its friendly atmosphere, its situation on the Perfume river, its comfort and breakfast.
Pakbeng Lodge on the Mekong is also to be recommended for the same reasons.

Meals were mostly adequate, some excellent like the ones on the Huong Hai junk on the Ha Long Bay.

Otherwise, we have the following recommendations:

1. In the Mekong Delta, a visit on one of the Cai Rang Market boats would be very interesting to speak with the boat people and see how they organize their living onboard.

2. In Ankor, before entering the temple area, we had to wait on line 1 1/2 hour (taking a pass photo and making the day pass). If the visitor was told in advance to bring one pass photo, it would speed up the entry.
Also in Ankor, you may forget the sunset at Phnom Bakheng because the crowds are too big now and the lookout totally disorganized.

3. In Ha Long, the crowds are also big now and...nearly 200 junks departing at about the same time...!!!
Unless the captain of your junk is given instructions to avoid the crowd, your visitors will be soon on line or in a pack to visit anything. We interviewed several locals and captains. Alltogether, there are nearly 600 junks now!

In a summary, we really enjoyed both the way Mr Dzung Trinh, yourself and your staff organized and followed up our tour, how you friendly treated us as customers, we met many other friendly persons along the trip, we discovered the sceneries and features of cultures that made our tour a permanent emotion that we still enjoy.

We wish you much success for this year!

Kind regards to you, to Mr Dzung Trinh and your staff.

Pierre and Annikki

Anne-Marie Ivarsson/Matz Nilsson
Con Dao Island - Flight ticket & Hote booking service

Dear Ms Luu Vo!

Now we are back in Sweden since last Monday and here is cold and windy and only 2 degrees, but no snow.

We want to thank you for a fantastic journey in your country and in Cambodia. You and your office have done a very good work. Everything was perfect and the three guides we had both in Vietnam, Phnom Pen and Siam Reap were very professional and pleasent. Vi felt very safe the whole time. Please if you can tell them that. We must not forget the chauffeurs who drive us safety. We hope of course that we can come back to Vietnam some time. We liked Ho Chi Minh very much.

Some feedback will we give, the hotels have been good, besides the hotel in Siam Reap, where the staff were not so serviceminded.

The Con Dao islands will probably be good in a future, when they have cleaned up the beaches and the fishingboats were gone, but the resort and the staff were very nice.
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Best regards from me and my friends
Anne-Marie Ivarsson

The Kane family
A wonderful experience with TNK travel (January 2009)

Our family of 4 just came back from first ever trip to Vietnam (18 days). We chose TNK Travel and it was a great trip. I wanted to thank TNK and to share our experience with future prospective travelers.

We started the planning almost a year ago. I must say we were hesitant at first and concerned about choosing a reliable travel agency. I read a lot on the internet (e.g. tripadvisor .com) before identifying a few prospective travel agencies. I then asked for an initial quote from my top 3 choices. TNK was the middle quote but what I liked about them was the level of detail in their initial proposal. I then looked at their guestbook and selected 17 people worldwide who recently travelled with them and emailed each of them to ask about their experience. Every single one of them responded and all were very positive about TNK. This made me comfortable with the idea of having to send money upfront to book a trip in an unknown country where I would have no recourse if dealing with an unethical company. With TNK, everyone assured me that once an itinerary is finalized, the company will do whatever is needed to deliver on its promises and to make it a pleasant experience, and they sure did in our case.

Over the following month, I exchanged several emails with Mr. Dsung Trinh, the Managing Director, to modify the original proposal based on my research about the sites we wanted to see. For example, we removed Sapa from the itinerary because the Northwest is quite cold in January, but added Phu Quoc Island instead. In the end, we agreed on a price for the revised itinerary, and I paid the customary 30% deposit by credit card (with a 3% fee). From that point-on, I dealt with Mr. Dac Dahn in their operations department who always promptly answered my numerous enquiries via email, and sent me hotel vouchers and e-tickets confirmation from air travel within Vietnam, as well as the invitation letter for the Visa. Fast forwarding to the end of the year when our trip began:

We landed roughly on schedule in Hochiminh on Dec. 31st in the evening and had to wait an hour or so (not ideal after a long flight from the U.S.) to get our visa on arrival ($25 per person in cash). Once we exited immigration and customs, our guide (J.J.) and driver were there to greet us with a sign bearing our name. They took us to our hotel. Because of the traffic, we ended up being in the center of the city near the cathedral at midnight, surrounded by thousands of motorcycles ringing their horns when the near year arrived (quite a cultural experience). From there on, the entire trip was very pleasant (I will post details on the hotels on tripadvisor.com). We visited Saigon (and stopped by the TNK office to pay the balance of the trip), the Mekong Delta, Phu Quoc, PanThiet/Mui Ne, Da Lat and Nha Trang by private van and boats with J.J. (who was excellent, paying attention all the time to what we liked and making sure we would always have it). We almost missed the speedboat from Rach Gia to Phu Quoc, because the itinerary was 30 minutes off. As a result, we couldn’t have a scheduled lunch, but TNK compensated us with an excellent previously unplanned dinner in Hue. J.J. ordered a van with more legroom when we returned from Phu Quoc to HCMC (we flew back), arranged for a small canoe to pick-us up and take us to our hotel in Cantho where we were stuck in traffic on the way to the ferry, etc…Then we flew to Danang and were greeted by our new guide Tui (Mr. Dac Dahn had kindly arranged for French speaking guides at the other locations at our request), and from there visited Hoi An, My Son and Hue, Tui was excellent as well, very knowledgeable and helped us solve an issue we had with a tailor-made suit. In Hoi An, the reservation was not a river view room, but after contacting Mr. Dac Dahn generously agreed to pay the difference and we were upgraded accordingly (we had insisted on 2 deluxe rooms with sea/river/lake views everywhere) and I had not noticed it was not the case at that location. We then flew to Hanoi which we visited with our last guide (Mr. Lan, who was OK but not as good as the first 2), and went from there to Halong Bay for a memorable 2-day cruise, then flew back to HCMC, stayed overnight near the airport and had an early morning flight back to the U.S. On returning to HCMC, no driver was there to greet us, we were told after we called the agency that he was stuck in traffic due to an accident. We took a taxi to the nearby hotel, and the driver who picked-us up in the morning for our return flight to the US. reimbursed us more than we had actually paid for the taxi. We didn’t have to pay a departure tax, it was apparently already included in our plane tickets.

Overall, a great trip thanks to the logistics, efficiency and professionalism of the TNK staff and agents. Food was excellent (though too copious for us, we always have festive lunch menus booked by TNK with 6 or 7 courses in nice restaurants (included in the price), nice buffet breakfasts in most hotels. The only problem (which is beyond TNK’s control) was insufficient hot water in many hotels for two people to take showers one after the other), a really bad road with big holes when exiting MuiNe to go to Da Lat and a third guide in the north who took us to a number of expensive stores along the road when we saw much cheaper prices elsewhere (we suspect he had a kick-back from these stores (but to his credit, he advised us to see the anthropology museum in Hanoi instead of a couple of extra pagodas, which we really enjoyed). Other than these minor opportunities for improvement, we had great hotel rooms with very nice views (important to us), good weather, good food, good guides and drivers (who seemed satisfied with the tips we gave them), and we were taken to all the places agreed-to on the itinerary. For those who do not feel adventurous enough to be on their own in Vietnam, we do strongly recommend TNK travel as an ideal, reasonably-priced solution. You can count on them for a memorable and pleasant trip. One final comment, although you can pay everything in Vietnam in US dollars or Euros, prices are cheaper if you pay in Dongs (local currency, FX at 17.3 VND/USD on the average during our trip, calculated at 15 by the stores if you pay in USD). Also a word of caution, Vietnam Airlines only allows 20 kg for a checked suitcase and 7 kg for a carry-on so travel light……

If you are thinking of going and have any question about our experience, don’t hesitate to contact me at dkane@mmm.com.

Our sincere thanks to MM. Trinh, Danh and the entire TNK staff for a wonderful trip. The Kane family (Austin, TX, USA)

Patricia Rojas
Wonderful place

I am impressed. I was navigating and found this site. Beautiful pictures. I wil choose vietnam for vacations no doubt and recomend this page to my friends.

Kind Regards

Paul Allen
Tour

Hi,
My wife and i have just completed a trip of Vietnam and the Saigon part of our tour was run by TNK.i am full of praise for our guide and driver, Mr Loc and Mr Tung? and the way things were run by your company. Please feel free to use my name and e/mail as a reference. Many thanks and hope we can return in the future.
Paul

Anna Connery
Thanks

Dear Dzung Trinh

We have returned from our very enjoyable tour of Vietnam and I wanted to thank you for your assistance with our arrangements. All went very smoothly and all the people who helped us were very nice.

The hotels were all good with the exception of Hai Phong Hotel which was not very clean.

We changed to the Hoi An Beach Resort (instead of the Glory Hotel) before leaving HCMC and we really enjoyed that.

Thank you again for your help. I will recommend you to my friends.

Kind Regards

Anna Connery