"Northern Thailand and Laos with Culture Trip"
From what I hear, our tour was new, and they ran ours even though only three of us were signed up, which I'm grateful for. The tour itself has a few kinks to be worked out - namely, there are a lot of quick stops but there are a few places that warrant longer stays, so it was disappointing to feel like we missed out on getting to know those places. The timing of the transportation affected the length of the stays, and the trains we took were very specific so they didn't provide much flexibility in scheduling, which would keep us longer or make us leave more quickly than we would have liked, and the same challenges in terms of the timing of our arrivals. So even though train travel is novel and fun at times, I don't know that I would prioritize taking a train tour in the future, as traveling via van or bus is much more flexible. The Laos portion of the tour exceeded expectations, and the Thailand part of the tour did not meet expectations, namely because our main guide in Thailand wasn't good, and our main guide in Laos was wonderful. Most aspects of the itinerary Culture Trip gave us were honored, except we didn't have a single expert guide on the entire trip, and I thought I understood from the itinerary that we would have an expert handling the walking tours mentioned, but it was always just our tour manager. That was a big problem in Thailand since our tour manager was already not meeting expectations. Also, my expectation when it is noted that a meal is included with our day's activities, that the tour company would have put some thought into where to take us for the meal, but there wasn't a single meal in our Thailand itinerary where we felt our tour manager wasn't winging it. That was frustrating and upsetting, as one of the reasons I book a tour is to have the guess work taken out of my traveling, and have someone who knows where to go handling taking us to restaurants where we would have a good experience. I would recommend booking with Culture Trip, as leading up to the trip they exceeded expectations in terms of communication and helping with all the steps in getting ready with the trip. But I would hope that Culture Trip reads this feedback and follows up on this tour to improve it for future groups.
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