Tuesday June 18, 2024 to Friday July 5, 2024

We walk into TUI in the centre of Apeldoorn. They sell great tours but only including the complete flight from the Netherlands to the destination in Vietnam, that is not what we are looking for, we want to book separate tickets and a separate tour, but they do not do that at TUI. Too bad for TUI.
So we look on the internet.
Djoser does offer what we want, individual tickets if we want them and also a number of tours, but we find the description of those tours too non-committal. Everything depends on what the members of the travel group want.
NRV also has the option to book tickets and tours separately, but only offers one tour, which in our opinion is too long.
Pia hears the name 333Travel from an acquaintance, and it also offers the option to book a tour, including flights but also excluding flights, and there is a choice of a number of tours, which are made individually and can therefore also be adjusted.
We have heard before that 333Travel offers quality. So we ask them if they can arrange for us:
- return trip Amsterdam - Bangkok with more spacious seats
- flights from Bangkok to Vietnam and back
- a tour through Vietnam of about 12 to 14 days
- everything in February and March 2025.
The answer comes quickly, they can do it and if we want they will make us a proposal. When can they call us, from Hanoi, to discuss our wishes?
In the meantime, we look at the tours they offer and we think the Vietnam Highlights tour seems the most suitable, a mix of culture, nature and cities.
On June 21, 2024, we receive a call from Arnold from Hanoi and we explain to him what we want and what we don't want and we tell him that we have been going to Thailand for almost 40 years. What we want is about two weeks in Vietnam, no night trains, reasonable hotels near shops and restaurants. And if possible, fly with EVA Air, and the flights to Vietnam and back via Suvarnabhumi.
It is all possible, and in the course of next week we will receive a proposal with a price quote, and a program, given the time we want to be in Vietnam Arnold suggests to cancel a visit to the Mekong Delta, no problem for us because we have already thought about that ourselves.
We are curious what we will hear/read.
For us this will probably be the first time that we will make an organized trip, albeit not a group trip, and also with an organization that we only know through word of mouth.

A week later we still haven't heard anything, so we ask by email when we can expect something. We will receive an answer the next working day, we have to wait for a travel organization in Vietnam.
On July 3 we have a proposal, it looks good, and there are even seats reserved on a flight with EVA Air, but we have to decide quickly, something we also know from our regular travel agency Nethai. We still want to add two excursions, the day after we have an adjusted proposal. It is not cheap, more than €8000 for two people, but a group trip would not be cheap either.
We agree on July 4th, because of the plane tickets we have to make a down payment quickly, and that doesn't go completely well. We run into a payment limit from our bank, we can adjust it ourselves, but because of security aspects we have to wait 4 hours until that adjustment becomes active. After 4 hours we try to make the payment again, but then it turns out that a few other amounts have been debited from the account in the meantime and we exceed the payment limit again. Adjust again, wait again, but finally at 9 o'clock in the evening we can transfer the down payment.
The next morning we receive a message from 333Travel that the payment has been processed.

Written on: 2024-07-08

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