We booked a private 6 day and 5 night Northern Vietnam tour from Canada months before our travel. The company was recommended by a well-known guidebook as a reputable tour company. Kevin, the sales rep, was very helpful in planning our trip and made every effort in quickly responding to our inquiries. We saw so many amazing sites, ate tasty food, were involved in awesome customs and met so many lovely people. Both our driver and tour guide were named Long so we ended up calling our driver Double Long. Both Long and Double Long were both friendly and kind. There were several concerns regarding our guide and driver we thought could be improved upon and we don't believe the feedback was received well by Mr Linh's Adventures which is why I'm publishing them here. On the first day, our driver was 45 minutes late with the explanation that there was much traffic. From what we know the traffic in Hanoi is generally bad so we are not sure how good of a reason that truly was. In general, Long did not explain how long our walks or excursions would be. For example, would it be a 10-minute walk or 30-minute hike or cave excursion? This left us guessing what we need to bring with us. Do we need to bring water, should we bring the heavier SLR or lighter point and shoot? We asked Long how to ask the local people if I could take a picture of them and he just told us to do it. We want to be respectful of the people and customs and felt Long put the villagers and us in an awkward position. We would ask people if we could take their picture using sign body & sign language and if they would shake their head no Long would tell us to take a picture regardless. We would not as we would not appreciate a stranger taking our picture against our wished so we wanted to respect them. At this point, Long would ask for our camera and take pictures secretly of people. We also ran out of water on our second to last day which was never replenished it. We asked at the beginning of the trip if we should buy water and Long said no if we run out he'll buy more. In addition, Long tried to talk us out of staying at the Quang Uyen homestay saying it was not nice and that we should go back to Cao Bang. We decided to do the homestay and it was the best homestay of our trip. The people, the sleeping space and the food. Both Long and Double Long drank rice wine at dinner time which we do not mind and understand its part of the culture. However, on the last day Long got quite drunk at lunch which we thought was unprofessional. We had lunch at the home of one of Long's good friends which was an amazing experience, but Long got so drunk he spoke loudly and passed out in the van on the ride home to Hanoi.
Our last homestay was more of a guesthouse than a homestay and for people wanting a homestay experience, this would not be it. It was the village of Mr. Lihn's homestay and all the rooms were separate from each other, which was nice for privacy but from the previous two homestays, we are not sure this was a true representative of what a local homestay would be. Later on, in our own self-planned trip, we used another guide from a different company and found he taught us more than Long had on our trip about the same things. My wife would ask questions and get a very cursory answer from Long whereas the other guide would get into history and meaning and culture of the things we saw.
Again, this was an amazing trip but the guiding was not to the standard we are used to for the amount of money we paid. We brought these concerns to Kevin's attention when we returned. In regards to Long's drinking and getting drunk it was suggested that my wife was "being too friendly and nice and Long let his guard down". Kevin proceeded to note he brought this feedback to Long's attention and Long was "very sensitive to the feedback and felt bad". Even though the behaviour was noted as being unprofessional, no attempt to correct it was brought forward and instead we were asked to send pictures of our trip to Kevin so he could use them to promote the company.
PS Mr Linh's Adventure - There is no need to reply to this review by thanking us for booking with you and then proceeding to tell us how and why we are wrong.
Thank you.
