We recently returned from a trip to Myanmar and used William at Good News Travel for our flights and hotel reservations. They are amazing!!! Highly recommend them.

The service was prompt - the communication was excellent - they met us personally on arrival in Yangon - use this company - you cannot go wrong.

Interestingly this was a company recommended to me by a contact in Myanmar. However, despite contacting them twice by email - I am still yet to receive a response!! Booked with Tour Mandalay instead.

Can I ask whether Good News charged a booking fee in addition to the hotel and airline fees? Also did anyone go to Mount Popa - if so how much is a car from Bagan?

I have used Good News Travels to book our flights and accommodation - we have not travelled yet so can not comment on service on the ground HOWEVER , service to date has been really good. Sometimes there are delays in replies, however, William has explained that this is due to the unreliable internet connections in Myanmar and the consequential methods for communication between agents and hotels etc.

The best bit is there is no need to send money in advance so no transfer fees (although Caxton FX don't charge).

Very happy with William's service at Good News Travels though worth pointing out that on certain elements of a package - notably airport transfers - you will pay considerably more to organise something in advance through GNT that's just waiting until you arrive at your destination.

We had a pretty simple itinerary in the end but my guess is that William would be very helpful if you needed to plan a more complex route too. When his Internet connection was working he always responded very promptly to us. We would definitely recommend him to other Burma travellers.

I finally received confirmation of our itinerary for next March from William. The hardest part was coping with an often five week wait between emails which most travellers will find frustrating compared to using similar agents in other S E Asian countries.

I made a couple of changes but William produced exactly what we asked for in the end so I'm very pleased.

I was keen to use his services in particular because he's happy to make a large number of reservations and then let you pay on arrival in cash which takes away the extra worry of transferring money to an account in a third party country.

Just got to be patient until March now, can't wait to get there.

I would certainly agree with the high praise for Good News Travel (William, the owner, and his staff were all great). We also spent 9 days in Myanmar in November (Yangon, Mandala, Bagan -our favorite stop and Inle Lake). It was just my wife and I and William arranged for guides/car and driver in all four cities, all airline flights and two of the hotels (I was actually able to get into hotels through Agoda.com that William was not able to - he said that the hotels usually allocate some rooms for the online services like Agoda and he encouraged me to do that if we could get a better hotel - the other advantage is that you can pay via credit card with Agoda). We paid William by transferring money into their Hong Kong bank, which he charged $50 for because of bank fees on his end - I think he actually prefers to take cash but we did not want to carry that in addition to money we needed in-country since we made a couple of stops before Myanmar.

The trip went like clockwork and we did not have one single problem. All the guides we had were good, but two of them are superstars (the guides were free lancers but all of them did a lot of work with Good News) - Than Toe Win in Yangon not only showed us the sights but really exposed us to the everyday life of people in Yangon and he was a consummate professional. The other superlative guide was Aung Ngwe in Bagan - not only was he a fantastic guide but he is also an amateur photographer who guides a lot of photography tours led by professional photographers and he gave us advice on where to take the best photos. And he was right - they are the best pictures I took the entire trip.

One note about communicating with Good News - we had some problems with e-mails and found that skype-ing William worked very well. Internet service in Myanmar can be buggy and skype is a good backup. It also took about two months from start to final confirmation of everything (some of that obviously is our fault), so I would definitely advise early planning. The gates are open in Myanmar and there are not that many hotels yet, especially in Yangon.

Whatever the hassles are in planning the trip, it's all worth it - beautiful country, spectacular sights and (as someone else noted) the people are the nicest/friendliest I think we have ever encountered. And although we walked through all types of neighborhoods during the day and night, there was never a moment when we felt anything but welcome and safe. I would go back in a minute, especially to Bagan.

We just returned from a 12 day trip in Myanmar, in the highest tourist season of the country, and William made this possible in a very short time.

We decided to travel just 2 months before, and due to the tourist boom in Myanmar was very difficult to book hotels, flights and tours.

I contacted several travel agents in Myanmar, and the only one that gave me a concrete and realistic answer was William. Due to the internet difficulties, it was better to call than to write emails, and in the end, William delivered all he promised. When we arrived in Yangon, we went to his office and paid in USD, so we saved high credit card commissions.

Very highly recommended!

My wife and I have just returned from a 3 week trip to southeast Asia. We had a fantastic time. We cannot thank TripAdvisor enough for the postings recommending William Myatwunna of Good News Travels (GNT) in Yangon. Thanks to William, our 10-day visit to Myanmar far exceeded our high expectations.

Starting with trip planning, William learned about us, our needs, and priorities and then made outstanding itinerary recommendations. He patiently answered all our questions and graciously accommodated several requested changes. The cost he quoted clearly represented good value.

In the end, we spent just the right amount of time in Yangon, Bagan, Mandalay, and Inle Lake. The things we saw and experienced were fascinating. Each booked hotel/ resort was superb, truly 5 star in location, accommodations, food, and service. The air-conditioned cars were modern and clean and the drivers were terrific.

We had read online and heard about the high quality of GNT’s guides, a vital trip success factor. Our guide, who stayed with us from beginning to end, is a truly delightful person, extremely knowledgeable about his country and eager to share it. His English is perfect and he has a great sense of humor.

Our guide “wowed” us at every turn. Whether it was presenting us with unexpected welcome gifts, buying flowers for us to present at our “day of the week” corner at Shwedagon Pagoda, helping us find just the right souvenirs or navigate restaurant menus, taking us to the ideal place to take photos of Shwedagon at night or in perfect morning light, or arranging an amazing sunset on the Irrawaddy (!), he spared no effort to ensure we would have a great time.

One extremely valuable benefit of GNT is that they have offices and staff in each of the major tourist cities. This is helpful in matters like airport logistics but even more so in emergencies. My wife suffered food poisoning and collapsed in a Bagan restaurant. Another diner – a German doctor – rendered immediate assistance but our guide, through his local manager, quickly arranged for a local doctor to follow us back to the hotel and examine her more thoroughly. Fortunately, she recovered quickly, but we were most grateful for our guide’s care and response.

Looking back now and savoring hundreds of amazing photos, our guide not only showed us wonderful sights but he shared his country with us in an intimate way and exposed us to everyday life there. We met unforgettable people like KaiKai, a 15 year old selling trinkets on the beach at Bagan and a chief monk who started a program to help disadvantaged children succeed in school. We met a waiter who saves every penny to pay $200 for another term of college and who reads “two candles” worth of English every night. We saw people arriving in longboats to buy the necessities of everyday life at the 5 day market in Inle Lake. We observed numerous handicrafts being made, from silk to boats, cheroots to bark paper, lacquer to woodcarving.

We were most lucky to have the guide chosen for us. By the end of the trip, he was truly a friend. But in talking to him about his colleagues, meeting some of them along the way, and reading feedback on TripAdvisor, I am certain we would have had a great trip with any of them. That’s because the approach and values we experienced are at the heart of William Myatwunna’s business philosophy and commitment to his clients.

We urge you strongly to visit this amazing country, especially now, in this time of transformation. Let Good News Travels help plan your trip—you won’t be disappointed! Due to infrastructure limitations, six months advance planning is desirable.