Edward & Sue McCarthy
Thank you

We are now back home to reality and feel that we would just like to let you know how much we appreciate all the help you and your staff gave us whilst we were in Vietnam, particularly when putting our constantly changing travel plans together. In particular we would like to thank not only you, but also Miss Kim and Nhu Nguyen for your unfailing patience and great sense of humour at all times.

You were recommended to us by our friends in France and we will be doing the same favour to any friends visiting Saigon in the future.

Once again, many thanks for all your help and good luck for the future.

Edward & Sue McCarthy

Troy Robinson
Feedback - Cambodia

Hello TNK Travel -

I was a little dubious about sending paymnet and booking over the internet, however, I can only say how impressed I was with the professionalism and service I received from TNK Travel.. I would thoroughly recommend this travel company to everyone - and although I only did Cambodia - I would encourage people to do Vietnam and Laos as well.. My experience with TNK was overwhelmingly impressed and the accom was fantastic.. If you are thinking of booking with this company - do not hesitate, the guides and drivers are informative, passionate, helpful and pleasant in every way..

Thanks Troy (Syd-Australia)

Kevin Mansfield
Dear Dzung.

Thank you for a very successful tour. The clients were very satisfied ! Mr Ky was excellent as was his assistant, Khan(?). The transport, accommodation, and the food provided was very good. Your staff support was outstanding and the organisation of the various stages went smoothly; a testament TNK travel.

I would like to change a few aspects of the itinerary for our proposed tours for next year. I will forward some ideas at a later stage.

We are currently determining our dates for next year and will let you know as soon as possible.

Sorry we missed catching up for a drink.

Kind Regards,

Kevin

Kevin Mansfield

Getaway Trekking

Mrs Isabella Hansson
vietnam highlights tour
I would like to thank you for organising our wonderful trip to Vietnam in July 2006. Your guides and drivers were superb and the service you provided was excellent. We feel so lucky to have spent time in your country and have seen so many marvelous sights that will stay in our hearts for ever. Your company offers excellent service and I recommend anyone thinking of travelling to Vietnam to travel with you. A special thanks to Do our guide in Hanoi for the wonderful experience of Halong Bay.

Kerry and Mal Morters
Mekong Delta Tour to Phnompenh ( Oct 28th 08 )

Dear Ms Nhu Y

My husband and I have now returned to New Zealand from our very memorable holiday in Vietnam and Cambodia. TNK booked the Mekong Tour to Phnom Penh for us and our tour guide was JJ. Our Mekong tour was wonderful, mostly due to JJ who looked after us so well in every way. JJ was a very professional, friendly and helpful guide.

We would be very grateful if you could forward this email to JJ's manager. We would highly recommend JJ as a tour guide for any foreign visitor to your country.

We would like to make one small suggestion about the tour. It would have been helpful to have the correct Cambodia Visa forms prior to our departure on the boat to Phnom Penh. Before our departure from New Zealand, we did download forms from the Cambodian Embassy web site - bu 
we did download forms from the Cambodian Embassy web site - but on the day, the Cambodian Customs required a different form.

The only other comment we would like to offer, and this has nothing to do with the TNK Mekong Tour itself, but we were very concerned about the terrible living condition for the two bears at the Crocodile Park. If you can provide any influence to help these bears, we are sure they would appreciate this.

Thank you TNK for a great tour.

Kerry and Mal Morters

Thom Stephens
Thank you! (from Thom Stephens)

Hello,

I arrived back in the U.S. last night and wanted to send you a quick email.

Our trip to Vietnam was fantastic. Thank you very much! Everything was perfect-even the weather was beautiful while we were there.

The hotel was great, the tours were very good and Mr. Ha and Mr. Kong (driver) were very polite, punctual and informative.

Everything you arranged was perfect and I will be recommending TNK Travel to anyone traveling to Vietnam in the future.

Best regards / Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Thom Stephens

Anna Luedicke
Hello

Hello, I just wanted to say thank you very much for all that you did for us in our recent trip to Vietnam. We just had such a wonderful holiday, helped by expert administration by you. Everything went according to plan and was so slick. With 2 young children, it took all the worries away and let us enjoy ourselves. The quality of the cars and guides was very good and we wanted for nothing. We selected your company because of your competitive prices and now that we have seen that you have quality service to match, we will recommend you to our friends.

Many thanks,

Anna Luedicke

Peter C
An enjoyable experience

Dear TNK,

An email to thank you for your service and for a great tour of the Mekong Delta.

I am a tour leader with 10 years experience in South East Asia, I can say honestly that your operations management and performance are excellent. Your guides are great and personable even with the massive turn-arounds throughout the tour. I was very impressed.

I hadn't booked with your organisation and randomly chose Brothers. When we switched buses at the Bonsai display place Ms Nhi became our chaperone and guide. She is a great asset to your company and was able to manage the chaos in the travellers minds easily, pleasantly assertive and welcoming. Ms Nhi is extremely competent.

I hope that with the inevitable economic pressures descending on us at this time that TNK can hold their prices. Everyone I spoke to on the tour commented on the value for money and the efficiency of movement.

Well done TNK and certainly Miss Nhi.

Yours gratefully,

Peter Cochrane

karen toft
Thank you

Hi Winston – a note of thanks for our wonderful trip to Vietnam. Everything went without a hitch – absolutely superb !!! The guides were fantastic as was the country and all the places we went and people we met. The trip covered a variety of sites, activities and experiences so I congratulate you on organizing it for us.

I have only one comment to make and that’s regarding tipping the tour guides. As we don’t tip in Australia , nor do the Vietnamese, but considering the poor wages we had no idea what to tip and we couldn’t tip the guide without the driver. Perhaps giving some guide to future travelers would be of benefit. We overtipped in the beginning but got it figured out by the end after asking Mr Danh & Mr Trang. Also we weren’t sure about tipping the boat drivers considering we were the only ones on the boat eg on Perfume River and Halong Bay.

This is a trivial issue in the big scheme of things so I want to make more the point about the fabulous timing and thought you put into our time there. Again , many thanks.

Regards………..karen Toft & Clive Hockey

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)