Laos budget holiday

Environment

We use local transport where safe, reliable and feasible to do so. When this isn’t possible, we use private locally-owned transport instead. As such, we ensure our vehicles/fleets are well maintained and fuel-efficient.

On this trip we also travel on an overnight train, public buses, local river boat, songthaews and tuk-tuks. Using public transport helps to protect the environment by reducing additional cars on the road and also provides our travellers with a great cultural experience. Many exchanges between locals and travellers have happened on our local transport journeys. It’s the responsible way to get around and can also be a lot of fun!

Saying no to plastic bags is so ingrained in our minds that we actively hand out a reusable cloth bag to every traveller on our trips. We want to help our passengers get on board by making it easier for them to avoid single-use plastic bags whilst discovering a destination with us.

Community

All our local tour leaders are recruited from within Thailand and Laos, creating stable jobs and contributing towards the regional economies. Their local knowledge is invaluable, and they are often the difference been a good holiday and a great one. They can recommend everything, from the best dishes to try in a local restaurant to taking you to a festival in a village that only the locals know about. This trip is designed to have loads of free time for you to hand pick exactly what optional activities you want to do, and our tour leaders will be on hand every day to help organise the activities that you choose.
We’ve been operating tours in these countries for over two decades and during this time we have built up a network of local suppliers. These suppliers don’t just offer a service, they also provide our travellers with a sense of family. We are committed to supporting locally owned businesses throughout our trips and we enjoy a superior service in return.

We ask all of our travellers to respect the local culture and our tour leaders are there to help assist our interactions with the local Thai and Laos people. On day one at our group meeting our leader will go through simple etiquette suggestions to help avoid offending the local people. We want to ensure we are travelling responsibly and by helping our travellers to immerse themselves in local customs and traditions they are able to gain a better understanding of the countries we travel through.

We have a foundation that was set up to empower travellers to have a positive impact on the communities they visit. It now supports more than 50 grassroots projects around the world. In Thailand we support an organisation called Friends of the Asian Elephant. Asian elephants face a number of troubling threats in Thailand. Ongoing human development has dramatically reduced the size of their habitat. As a result, elephants and humans often live in close contact with each other, confrontations are inevitable and many elephants are harmed in the process. Land mines are another risk. To make matters worse, elephants are frequently exploited for labour and tourism. Friends of the Asian Elephant was established to protect and conserve the welfare of elephants in Thailand. FAE’s elephant hospital provides free medical care for sick and injured elephants, as well as education for keepers. Its Mobile Vets Project sends teams to Northern Thailand to diagnose and treat elephants. It also works collaboratively with other organisations to advocate for elephant welfare. We were the first global operator to end elephant riding and have now been joined by over 160 travel companies after learning of the abuse.