Hi Kim

Thank you for such an amazing 14 days in Vietnam. You did a fantastic job putting together the itinerary (some places we didn’t know about but were amazing e.g Ninh Binh, Hoi An etc), and made the whole process seamless and stress-free, so thank you!

I have added a ‘glowing’ review on Trip Adviser, but thought I’d offer a bit more details on an email…

Review on Trip Adviser:

“We’ve just come back from 14days tour of Vietnam, organised by Kim at Vivu Travel.  She was fantastic from beginning to end.  She had put together a tour, covering places that we hadn’t even thought of, a mixture of relaxation and adventure.  We were travelling with 2 kids and she totally understood the brief of mixing fun and culture.  Our guides were all experienced,  knowledgable and very flexible.  A big shout out to our favourite guide, Tu Tran, in Hanoi.  He was super helpful, polite, understood the needs for travelling with kids  (shade, toilet stops, limit walking etc), knowledgeable and knew the right contacts (he was able to get us in to see Train Street while others didn’t).  Our kids loved him and were sad to leave him when we left Hanoi.

All the hotels were in excellent locations, walkable to town.  All were amazingly beautiful, clean and exceptional service.  Our favourites were Movenpick Waverley Phu Quoc and Orchid Cruise Halong Bay.

It was also lovely to meet Kim and the team when we were in Hanoi - nice to put faces to names and we weren’t just a number.  They made us felt so welcomed, showered us with traditional
Vietnamese gifts and made sure we were happy.

Vivu Travel has made the whole process seamless and we’re so glad we trusted them to plan everything.  We’ve had such an amazing time that we’re planning a return in 2 years’ time, to be organised by Vivu of course!  Highly recommend.”

Hotels:
All hotels were amazingly beautiful and suited us perfectly, in great locations. The only one that we didn’t take to was Emeralda in Ninh Binh.  Although it was serenely beautiful and had a rustic charm, everything was very spread out, the staff weren’t as welcoming and happy as in other hotels, the food was mediocre, it was far /not walkable to town, some amenities in the room didn’t work properly (shower, toilet) etc.  Perhaps Emeralda Tam Coc would have been better, as we were there for the boat ride anyway…
We loved all the other hotels.

MekongEyes cruise:
We may have built up too much expectations from searching on the internet, but this bit was the only disappointing bit of the whole trip.  The cruise itself was great, and we loved the boat/food/cruise.  We were disappointed with the floating market lack of activity.  Perhaps we got there too late (9:30) but we were only approached by 2 boats trying to sell to us, before having to catch our transfer to Rach Gia.  After getting off the main boat, we ferry-ed for over 40mins to get to the hub of the floating market area, only to be approached by 2 boats, then off again.

I totally understand this part of the trip was not organised by yourself so please don’t take this as criticism, but please feed this back to MekongEyes.  Perhaps they need to plan for guests to leave the boat earlier to get to the market earlier to catch more activity, or perhaps explore a different part of the market…?  I don’t know - just a suggestion for improvement.

Orchid Cruise Halong Bay:
WOW!  That’s all we can say.  It was AMAZING!

Tam Coc Boat ride:
Again, WOW!  That was beautiful.

Guides:
We loved the energy of Daisy in HCM.
Our favourite was Tu Tran - he was polite, knowledgeable, accommodating and full of good suggestions.  Our boys were sad to have to bid farewell to him when we left Hanoi for Hue.  Please extend our thanks to him and hope to see him in a few years with his baby!

Ty was exceptionally knowledgeable and passionate about the history and culture of Vietnam.  We felt his passion for culture may have been wasted on our boys who were bothered by the heat and walking.  He may be more suited for couples or older travellers.

Please don’t take the above as criticism, just something to bear-in-mind/evaluate for future tours.  We have loved every second of it (maybe not the ferry ride to Phu Quoc but that’s a means to an end