Family holiday to Vietnam & Cambodia

We believe that travel should entail an exchange of knowledge and perspectives, a sharing of wealth, and a genuine appreciation of both Vietnam and Cambodia’s beautiful natural environments. This philosophy underpins the heart and soul of our style of travel. We recognise that poorly planned itineraries or poorly informed tourists contribute less to cross-cultural understanding and less to the livelihoods of local people.

This family journey combines two of Asia’s most alluring countries. Commencing in Vietnam we experience wonderful diversity from beautiful Hanoi to industrial Saigon. At the former there is the opportunity to visit Koto’s (know one, teach one) – a not-for-profit restaurant and vocational training centre staffed by disadvantaged young people – to try their infamous Koto smoothie. Deep in the south, in the Mekong Delta, we stay overnight at a local family’s house where we spend the night, enjoying the local hospitality and feasting on some of the regions specialties. Our offices also finance the Loretto Foundation in Saigon (which assists disadvantaged, poor and disabled children through education), and The Fred Hollows Foundation (which provides ophthalmologic services to underprivileged Vietnamese).

If you choose to continue your stay into neighbouring Cambodia a short flight takes us to Siem Reap and the monumental temples of Angkor. Here we have facilitated a very significant donation to the World Monument Fund in Cambodia, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the maintenance of a select number of archaeologically precious temples in Angkor. During this journey we actively encourage our travellers to patronise or financially assist numerous not-for-profit organisations in Cambodia including Made in Cambodia in Siem Reap (which sells items made by underprivileged Cambodians) and the Sunrise Orphanage in Siem Reap. Our offices also finance the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, which provides health care services to poor Cambodians and through which we sponsor the training of a Cambodian nurse.

On this journey our local guides are trained to share their knowledge of cultural and other local issues in a balanced, informative way; in this journey alone you are likely to meet several local guides from different areas in Cambodia and provinces in Vietnam. They share real experiences from their own lives and insights into their family life, influences and beliefs, thus providing our travellers with a deeper understanding of the places they visit. This is what motivates our guides, not shopping commissions.

Our offices in Cambodia (Phnom Penh and Siem Reap) and in Vietnam (Saigon, Danang and Hanoi) are staffed with local people wherever possible and we have a long term aim of filling management roles with competent local staff. This presence in Cambodia and Vietnam means we are much better able to control the content, the actions of our suppliers, and the style of our small group journey.