Heart of Cambodia

The spectacular trip was completely enhanced by our most excellent guide The hotels, home stays and itineraries were all superb

A well balanced, fascinating trip. An excellent tour leader, Try,, who went above and beyond on several occasions. There was lots of variety. Whilst not a negative comment, I suggest that the sunrise boat trip on the Piphot River could be shortened - the boats are uncomfortable, and there is an insufficient variety of things to see to justify the five hour round trip.

Quite full-on, you need to be active but a few “rest” days too. Our guide, Try, was available 24/7 and full of information and advice and a great sense of humour. He took great care of us. Also enjoyed, Borin, our guide for Angkor Wat.

Everything went very smoothly. The leader, Tre, was always organised and knowledgeable about the different visits. His English was a little difficult to understand at times but he was very attentive and helpful when there was a personal issue. No faults to raise.

Great trip with a really varied itinerary, which involved doing something very different each day. Cambodia - the land of smiles and lovely food.

An incredibly varied tour based around cities, historic religious locations, heart wrenching human suffering and an idyllic island setting. The tour guide is local and is very knowledgeable about all aspects of Cambodia.

Loved the trip but I felt like we were paying wages instead of tips. The guide suggested we tip $20 for a driver that drove us part of they journey and another $20 for the second driver for the reminder of the journey. Also for other drivers and local guides we were tipping $20-$15 regularly and when you can hire a tuck tuck all day for $25 these were wages and not tips. The home stay was very awkward as we all did not speak each others language, the internet was poor in this part of the county so could not utilize google translate (not a complaint, no one can control the internet and personal phones etc) and it was hard to speak using our guide as a translator. I would have liked for it to be a much more interactive experience asking and sharing cultures and how we both live. Possibly cooking together buying the food etc. but it was just awkward and we all went to bed very early. The guide with his personal experiences was interesting, but too much of the ancient history needs to be interspersed with regular daily living interests. All in all a good trip nice to see a variety of the country from jungle, to beach, to city.

Small group was phenomenal. Phe Try was excellent and knowledgeable.

Disappointed with inaccuracies between the trip description and itinerary provided by Explore and the actual conduct of the tour. Whilst we appreciate that it may be necessary, for operational or logistic reasons, to deviate from the prescribed itinerary, the extent to which this occurred was excessive. Several times were changed during daily excursions, some even moved days and in some cases events just did not happen. Most disappointing amongst these changes was the visit to Angkor Wat, arguably the highlight of the trip and the reason we booked this particular tour. The trip notes stated that “This morning we visit the beautiful Angkor Wat for sunrise…..”. They also imply that we would be at Angkor Wat for the entire morning, as the next items are listed as being “this afternoon…”. In reality, we arrived at Angkor Wat in the late afternoon, just an hour before it closed! So, instead of enjoying the sunrise (it had been a glorious morning) we were rushed around in the pouring rain (forecast the day before), in the hour before it closed and/or got dark! I would suggest that if your tour notes said “This afternoon we rush around Angkor Wat in the pouring rain…” the tour uptake would be greatly diminished; we certainly would not have booked. I raised this concern with Explore when three weeks ago when we returned for the trip, but have not heard a word from them. Very disappointing.

The guide was really wonderful. So knowledgeable and generous and always bringing good vibes and trying to accommodate everyone and build a group bond. He was passionate about Cambodia and it's history and culture so we were able to learn a great deal. We also appreciated his commitment to supporting both eco and local tourism and his generosity in sharing his life story. He kept us all very safe throughout the trip. It would have been nice to have a little more down time/free time throughout the holiday. It was a little intense and tiring overall but a very rich and fulfilling experience overall too. The beds in 90% of the accommodation choices were too hard on the backs of most of the trip participants, and it's especially difficult to do such a full on trip without much sleep from the night before. The Sanctuary residence in Siem Reap had black mould in many of the rooms and they had to move us multiple times. The staff were lovely but the facilities were not maintained with a lot of broken fixtures and fittings, little to no hot water most days and a generally unhealthy room set up. The homestay was a fantastic experience and Koh Rong is a spectacular island paradise so was a lovely way to finish the trip. The hardest thing for us is that we are vegan and were told by explore that we would be catered for throughout the trip. Despite this there was only 3 days were we could eat breakfast (out of 12 days of the trip). We also went hungry for many lunches and dinners because the places we ate didn't have suitable food options for us. When we were in the larger cities where we could go to vegan and vegetarian eateries we mostly weren't provided the option to do our own thing over the lunch or dinner break so that we could eat properly even during those days so we went hungry or had to sacrifice a lot on food sanctity which was difficult for us. We also essentially paid for food that we never received.

The efficient rebooking of our internal flight after the Flybe collapse was much appreciated.