South East Asia Small Group Trips

This was a lovely, well-paced overview of Thailand with a great mix of historical and religious sites, shopping and experiences in/with nature. We were expecting the weather in January to be oppressively hot and humid but it was pleasant and in fact it was surprisingly cold at night when at the Homestay and in the Raft hotel. Thailand is an incredibly cheap country and dinners including drinks cost between 100-300 baht pp. To fully enjoy this trip you need to expect to climb lots of steps but it is well worth the effort. We were fortunate to have a fun group and a fantastic tour guide in Wit. Would highly recommend.

This was my first Explore trip, my first holiday in Mexico, and my first organised cycling holiday. It was fantastic. We had a great group of people and our local leader & driver were excellent. So many highlights, I wish the holiday had lasted longer. We visited places that I wouldn't have seen if I'd organised the holiday myself. The busy schedule was so well organised by the Explore team that I didn't have to worry about the details and I could just enjoy myself. I want to go back asap!

A wonderful place to go and a full itinerary made sure we saw the best of it. Explore made sure everything went well, and I would have no hesitation in using them again. A top trip.

This was an excellent, well paced tour of 2 really interesting countries with and amazing culture. The tour had to be amended at the last minute due to a change in the UK Government travel advice meaning that we were no longer able to visit one of the areas on the itinerary. In addition with the government in Benin deciding to end the voodoo festival at midday on the 10th due to the general election taking place on the 11th, the itinerary had to have another change. However Explore and the local agent were able to make a number of amendments that meant we still saw everything else and had a couple of extra items, including a stilt dance, added. I was disappointed to miss the voodoo procession, but we saw a lot of dances, both at the festival and in the villages, which were fantastic. I enjoyed the free time that we had in several locations as it gave me an opportunity to wander around exploring and chatting to local people and I even watched Kara FC, who I was told are a premiership team in Togo, play a friendly. There wasn't much variety in the food, but as a vegetarian I was well catered for and the quality was good, although it sometimes lacked a bit of protein. Overall I thought that the accommodation was good for this area of Africa and I enjoyed being in the stilt village (with very basic facilities), watching life go by and hiring our own boat for an afternoon trip. Whilst we didn't spend long there, I was pleasantly surprised by Cotonou, where I loved the large statue of an Amazon warrior and the long graffiti wall. Royal Air Maroc did manage to lose the luggage of everyone on the London flight via Casablanca, due to the short transit time at Casablanca. Our guide said that this can often happen and worked well to get all but one of our bags delivered to us after lunch on day 3 (one person didn't get their bag until the penultimate day of the trip so we had to lend him clothes etc). We had to pay for a taxi to get the bags to us, but Explore refunded this. So, I would recommend that you check the flight timings and ensure that any transit times are sufficient. Our guide wasn't particularly forthcoming with information on occasions and could have communicated better with us about what was going on, especially given all of the changes. However he did deal with a number of issues well, including the lost bags and late changes to the itinerary. So in summary, I really enjoyed the tour, the dances were fantastic, the cities, towns and villages were very interesting, most people were friendly and, given all of the challenges, I thought that Explore and their local agents did an excellent job in ensuring that we still saw and experienced so much.

We had a great leader, tacking us to restaurants to eat with the locals. He was good at explaining things to us and went out of his way to help us. When the cyclone hit and our flights were cancelled he helped us with alternate flights and accommodation we would have struggled on our own. My only suggestion for the tour that could be different would be exploring the backwaters canals in small boats.

Laos was lovely, still not touristy and quite laid back. Luang Prabang is quite charming. There was a good range of places to see and enjoyable boat trips, especially the day on the Mekong, many waterfalls and lush scenery in the North. Very friendly people although not much English spoken and you have to be prepared for some slow and haphazard service in restaurants. Food was generally tasty. The accomodation was very good at times especially compared to many Explore tours although sometimes you didn't have enough time to enjoy the facilities on offer. The roads are generally in a basic state so there were some long days of travel. The tour leader, Tra and our first local guide, AK were excellent. I had been to Cambodia before and would recommend it. The various temples on the Angkor Wat site are excellent. This time I had a tummy bug so wasn't able to enjoy it as much. It would be great if Explore return to offering a two week trip to Cambodia, which is what I did before and started to offer a two week trip to Laos. It can be nice to have the option to see places in a bit more depth.