From: Victoria Wilson
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2014
To: Discovery Indochina, Ms Mai Trang
Subject: Re: 20 Days Best of Myanmar & Laos
Dear Ms Trang
Well we have now been home for one week after our holiday to your part of the world. We thoroughly enjoyed our trip, everything went as planned to our itinerary. The organisation of the flights, vehicles etc etc was very good.
We really enjoyed visiting Myanmar most of all, our guide there, Thein, was superb. He was so knowledgeable and educated, we enjoyed Thein. Once we had seen enough Pagodas and Buddas we asked him to slightly change what we were going to see and do and this he did with pleasure. All our hotels in Myanmar were good, the Thiripyitsaya Sanctuary Resort and the Pristine Lotus Spar Resort hotels, whilst travelling were lovely, and the Bay View Beach Resort at Ngapali was such the right place to rest before commencing our travelling again to Laos. Also your suggestion of us having lunches included each day whilst on tour in Myanmar was most enjoyable. Our guide chose different local dishes for us each day and we really experienced local cuisine.
Looking forward to Laos, I’m afraid in hindsight, that we wished we had spent more time in Myanmar, extra time in Bagan and perhaps visiting a different region of the country. Once we had seen the wonderful sights in Myanmar, Laos paled into insignificance. You really do not need 2 nights in Vientiane, you only need one morning sightseeing there. The Vientiane Plaza hotel was really not to our liking, it was very utilitarian, no outside space to sit, business orientated, would not recommend it to tourists. As for the itinerary taking us to The Plain of Jars, 7 hours one day to get there and 8 hours the next day in the minibus to reach Luangprabang, was really a waste of time. We could have quite easily flown direct to Luangprabang and missed that part of the trip. Other people we talked to also had the same opinion. Luangprabang is a delightful town and we enjoyed our stay there, the Villa Santi Hotel was delightful for the 3 nights we spent there. Our guide in Laos, Pan, was good but not excellent, he didn’t like us deviating from the written itinerary if we wished to do something different, and although he did his job we felt he only did the minimum to satisfy our requests.
All in all, the Myanmar experience was above expectation but Laos was not quite as good – because of the itinerary, which as I said we did not realise meant so long travelling by bus from A to B. Also in the future we would do all we could to ensure that there were not so many early morning flights as rising at 3.30 am really takes it toll for the rest of the day – we do realise that on certain occasions the early flights are unavoidable.
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Once again, thank you for organising our holiday and we do hope that the above comments are helpful to you and your company for future guests when arranging a tour.
May we wish you every success in 2015, we will be contacting you at some stage next year.
Our very best wishes and a Happy New Year to all at Discovery Indochina.
Terry and Victoria
