Indochina: Vietnam, Cambodia & Laos trip in January 2016

rampeds

We are looking at doing the Indochina trip (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) in January 2016. We have traveled 5 times with Tauck before. It is unusual to see so few reviews of this trip on the Tauck website and the 2 reviews that are there are less positive and older than reviews of other trips. For anyone who might have gone on this trip, how did you like the trip? Were the number of air flights on the trip problematic? How much time was actually spent at Angkor Wat and Angkor Tom?
Would appreciate comments about this trip!
Rick

Liblaw

My husband and I took the Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos trip in Jan. 2015. We enjoyed the trip and here are some pros and cons. We took a small group departure which has many advantages but in our case with only 13 guests it was a bit too small,
This was a very organized tour with a very detailed oriented tour director. Great itinerary and we especially enjoyed the boat tour of Ha Long Bay. Laos was very special as well. The hotels and food were the best and except for the one in Danang, very well situated. The Intercontinental Danang was a fabulous hotel but completely out of the way. After our tour of Hoi An we went back to the hotel and were stranded there in the mountains. .

Several times the flight times were either very early or very late and our tour director had no control over these. I’m talking 5:30 departure from the Hotel in Danang, or a very late flight from Laos to Hanoi. The local guides were very uneven. Some were great, but a couple of them were really bad. Our tour director even expected this and warned us about one, but she had no control over their selection. Guides are really important and this unevenness was a disappointment.
Vietnam and Siem Reep were fabulous and the only place I would skip was Phnom Penh. I found the town unappealing and visiting the killing fields with the mound of bones gruesome. I've been to the camps in Poland but here you were walking on the bones. But that’s my opinion.
.

KathleenDuley

I am a travel agent who has had great reviews on Tauck tours. I was contemplating sending a group on this tour in November 2016. After reading the old reviews,and not having seen many since then, except for this one, I am inclined to choose another company.

I would appreciate hearing quickly from anyone else who has travel recently, and especially would like to see a response from Tauck.

Thank you.