Janis Lindblom
Indochina Tour

My husband & I have just arrived home to Australia after a sensational three week private/tailored tour to Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos. Our holiday was arranged by TNK Travel & they have been absolutely fantastic! From my first email inquiry to the tour operator staff & the immediate response from Luu Vo with a prosposed itinery. The second contact person was Dac Danh in sales & the bookings of all our hotels, flights, tours & lunches were exceptional. Finally our guides & drivers in all three countries were all excellent (especially "JJ" in HCM and Hui from Hue). They were very professional, knowledgeable & ensured our comfort & safety at all times. It was a stress & hassle free experience from beginning to end which becomes important as we get older. We now have every intention of returning to spend more time in HCM and Hanoi & to visit other towns & villages that we did not get to this time.

We will definitely use TNK Travel again next time as we believe it would be impossible to get better value and service by any other means. We highly recommend!
Thank you all for making this our best holiday ever!

marianne Kant-Schaps
Mekong Delta tour 2 days/1night Aug 9th -10th 2011

Dear Luu Vo!

At the end of our Vietnam travel I would like to thank you very much for the organisation of our Mekong Delta tour, which was really a great pleasure for our family. It was also a pleasure to meet your local guide and to see so many interesting spots of your beautiful country.

Best regards, Marianne Kant

Liz Lalor
Excellent Service

My husband & I have just returned from a trip to Vietnam & Australia.

I came across TNK via the www and booked my internal flights, taxis, and accommodation around Vietnam with this company. I am pleased to say our trip went very well and TNK delivered all it promised.

I found the company easy to communicate with and very efficient.

I plan to return to Vietnam next year and will use TNK again...thanks!

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

Def/Air Attache of Chile in Israel
Thank you

Dear all.

This is to say thank you very much for all your support during our trip to Vietnam. We spent a wonderful time in your country, and we were able to know a lot about your people, culture, places and ways of life.

Our three guides, Thong - in Saigon and Mekong Delta; Thom - in Hue and Hoy An; and Ding - in Hanoi and Halong Bay did a wonderful work. Congratulations
for all of them.

I think we can recommend your agency to our friends.
Our best regards
Carlos Bertens and family.

matthew smith
mekong delta tour

My friend and I went on the three day Mekong delta tour to Phenom Phen mid July, we really enjoyed it.

We were impressed by the itinery of the trip, we really fit a lot into the time we had- a lot of early mornings!

Our tour guide JJ spoke good English and was from the area so could tell us a lot about the culture.

JJ was also very helpful; i left my bag, on a bus we had used, which was heading back to Saigon!- i was heading to Cambodia! I told JJ and he organised the contents to be shipped to Singapore where i was finishing my trip.

I am now back in Singapore and have recieved my bag, really saved me a lot of time and hassel!

I would recommend TNK travel to all, great staff, great value!

mp
Thanks

Dear Dzung,
 
I just had an e-mail from my friend Martin Purvis about his trip to Vietnam. He is absolutely delighted with all the work you did. Thanks for taking such good care of him. I'm not surprised. As I tell everyone, TNK is the best outfit in Vietnam! Martin says he is hoping to go to Cambodia on his next trip. Can you help in Cambodia?
Here is what Martin wrote about you:

"Our visit to Viet Nam was fantastically good, and I very much appreciate for your advice and assistance.  I never met Djung in person, but we spoke on the phone a few times, and his arrangements were all superb.  Even though we arrived two days late because of a travel snafu, he managed to rearrange all of our excursions.  He also arranged for us to have vegetarian food throughout our trip.  I would heartily recommend his organisation to anyone else."
 
Great work! Maybe you should put his comments on your website.

Please send us pictures of your new baby! Can you sleep through the night yet?
 
Thanks again for all you did for my friend.
 
All the best,
mp

Rainer Passon
Tailormade trip to VIetnam & Cambodia

booked a tailormade trip Hanoi - Angkor Wat - Saigon with TNK; perfectly organised and all in all just great.

Go TNK !!

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)

Sarah Milsome
Flight booking ( 5/15/2007 )/ Ms. Milsome

I would just like to say thank you for organising our travel arrangements.

We had a wonderful time in Viet Nam and the accommodation was fabulous! Now it’s back to work to pay for the shopping we did!

Thanks very much

sarah