Vietnam biking holiday
Typically you will be sharing your experiences with between 4-20 like minded travellers (depending on the trip, operator and how many others are booked on the trip) and you'll have a group leader with you. Whether you are travelling alone or with friends its good value, and a great way to meet new people! While itineraries are pre-planned there is some flexibility and you'll have plenty of privacy. This trip will appeal to travellers of all ages who enjoy meeting new people as well as seeing new places.
How this holiday makes a difference
Environment
Plastic usage is a big problem in Asia so we use large refillable water bottles to fill your drink bottle. When we prepare picnic lunches (at the times where there are no local restaurants to eat in) we don’t have prepacked meals made for each person. Instead we buy locally from markets and prepare the lunch ourselves which cuts down on the plastic waste.
Our small office is, apart from accounting requirements, paperless. We deal with customers electronically and do not print brochures to distribute. By remaining only as an online presence we reduce the wastage associated with producing annual brochures.
Community
On this cycling tour, apart from your tour leader, all the crew including drivers, guides and crew are locals from the region through which we travel. Part of our commitment to our crew is to teach them about bicycle maintenance so that both our tours run better and our crew can learn new skills.
In Quy Nhon we support the Nguyen Nga project which helps young people with disabilities to gain an education, learn skills for their future and live within a supportive community. Quy Nhon is quite off the main tourist trail so our support has more impact compared to supporting a project that in is in a well travelled area. We take our clients to the project centre where they learn about the project, experience a music and dance show and have an opportunity to buy crafts made by the project. Some groups also donate money to assist further development of the project.
We keep our group size to a maximum of 14 clients. This is both a reflection of the limits in the accommodation of the smaller towns that we stop in and our desire to not be too over powering in our impact on a destination. We only run this tour a few times a year and have no desire to bring weekly groups through these regions.
All accommodation - apart from one - used on this tour is locally owned. They employ all staff locally. The one foreign owned resort that we stay at - Whale Island - has an environmental program. Through protection efforts and transplanting sea coral in the surrounding waters there has been a dramatic increase in the diversity of marine life.
