What every journey includes
Everything on this site runs to a published date. You are not designing a trip from scratch and you are not waiting to hear whether it will operate: the itinerary is written, the departures are listed, and the group is capped at sixteen so a restaurant table and a boat deck still work.
- A guide who lives in the country, with you throughout
- Comfortable hotels chosen for where they are, not their star count
- Breakfast daily, and the dinners where eating together matters
- Every transfer, entrance fee and internal flight named in the itinerary
- Sixteen travellers at most, and departures guaranteed
- Trains, boats and back roads rather than a coach for every leg
- Unscheduled hours built in, with suggestions if you want them
- Tipping settled by us, so nobody is counting notes at the door
- The same journey privately, on your own dates, if you prefer
- Extensions to any of the five countries, arranged end to end
- One office answering, from the first question to the last transfer
Sixteen at most
Sixteen is the number at which a group can still eat in one room, board one boat and hear one guide without a microphone. Above it, a journey turns into a coach tour.
Departures that go
Every published departure runs from two travellers. You will not be told six weeks out that the date you booked flights around has been cancelled for want of numbers.
Guides from the place
Our guides grew up in the towns they walk you through, are paid by the day rather than by commission, and are under no obligation to stop at a shop that pays them.
Told straight
Where a thing is hard — the Thai–Cambodian land border, the burning season in the north, the limits of travel in Myanmar — it is on the page before you book, not buried in a conditions document.
Room in the day
Two temples done properly beat five done at a jog. Most days finish by mid-afternoon, and the free hours come with suggestions rather than an obligation.
Ours end to end
The same company that sells you the journey operates it. Nothing is handed to a local subcontractor you have never heard of once your flight lands.
How we travel
Group departures
Published dates, sixteen travellers at most, English throughout, and a guide with the group from the first transfer to the last. Most people who book one of these travel as a pair or on their own.
The same trip, privately
Any journey on this site can be run for your party alone, on your own dates, with the route reshaped around what you actually want to see. The itinerary is the starting point, not the contract.
Extensions
Add a few days at either end — the islands after Thailand, the delta after Vietnam, Angkor after Laos — and we will arrange the flights, the nights and the transfers as part of the same booking.
On the water
A night on a junk in Halong, the slow boat down the Mekong, a longtail through the Bangkok canals, a sampan in the delta. Where the water is the better road, we take it.
By rail and road
The overnight sleeper to Chiang Mai, the new line from Vientiane to Luang Prabang, the coast run over the Hai Van pass. The journey between two places is part of what you came for.
Where we stay
We book small, family-run places where we can, and a larger hotel only where there is no alternative. If the best bed in a town is a modest one, that is in the itinerary, not a surprise at check-in.
Eating together
Breakfast every day and the dinners that matter — the first night, the farewell, the evening a family cooks for the group. The rest of the meals are yours, and your guide will point you at the stall worth queueing for.
Travelling responsibly
Guides and drivers on day rates, no commission stops, elephant sanctuaries that neither ride nor perform, and group sizes small enough that a village lunch is a lunch rather than an event.
Every small group journey we run
Guaranteed departures across Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar, from five days to three weeks. Group size is capped at sixteen and every departure runs from two travellers.
