Has anyone taken a tour with this company? Am considering going to Thailand on their ';Amazing Thailand'; tour. Any other suggestions? Thanks.
Smartours
I went on Smartours trip to Japan last summer and am booked for their South Africa trip on Christmas Day. I know someone who has traveled with them to Thailand, China, Scandinavia, and Japan. Our trip was wonderful and I have only heard good things about Smartours. The people in their office, however, need to brush up on their customer relations skills. They are not friendly.
Smartours
did you end up going on the thailand trip with smartours? how was it? how was the hotel quality? how was the company to work with?
thank you.
r
savta2aviv@prodigy.net
First time traveling with Smartours -Thailand with Phuket extension and it was Fabbbbbulous. The tours were great, the bus was only half full so you learnt everyones name and story (great fellow travelers) and the director (Mr. Boeing) was superb (many resouces and stopped for local tastings.) Also the itinerary was flexible and as a group we initiated some event that were not on the list (long neck hill tribe people, transvestite show- simon cabaret) and the director provided us with many stories and executed some of the local customs, and provided assistance above and beyond the call of duty in some cases to make sure we where kept happy. I would recommend this tour.
Thinking of booking Australia next year. If anyone has done that one I would be interested to hear you experiences.- specifically the size of the groups. If you would like more information about Thailand send me a note. Thanks
Thanks for the post. I%26#39;m thinking about this Thailand tour myself. Could I contact you directly if I have questions?
Hello, I%26#39;m considering the ';Amazing Thailand + Phuket'; Smartour this winter, and am wondering what mix of people usually go on these? I%26#39;m 28-years old and may go with a friend or two, or possibly on my own. Is it mostly older couples? Any info much appreciated!!!
Feel free to join us on the Phuket extension tour starting Nov 14. We%26#39;re low 30s and travel worldwide a lot!
I just got back from Thailand. It was awesome and as mentioned above, Mr. Boeing is a great tour guide. Two optional tours are worth taking: floating market out of Bangkok and tribal villages in Chiang Rai. Highly recommended in general!
Just returned from the ';Amazing Thailand Plus Phuket'; extension. This was my second Smartours trip, and I liked this one a little less than my previous trip six years ago to Beijing. I traveled with my sixteen year old daughter.
Smartours remains a terrific bargain...simply no way you could put this together yourself and come close to doing as much, or staying in as many places. We had 40 in our overall group, but as always you see them as little or as much as you like once you arrive at a destination. Our group was very compatible....I made some friends, and it was great o have company in lonely airports, huge markets etc. There was a great mix of twenty somethings all the way up to seventies...my teenage daughter really appreciated that it wasn%26#39;t all ';old people.';
Highlights for me were Chiang Mai....much easier for me as a Coloradan to deal with then the madness and exhausting nature of Bangkok. The three day stay in Phuket was also very good.. great hotel, though Patong Beach is an overcrowded and overrated destination. There are a lot of side tours to various islands. For me, the three days we spent traveling to Lampang and the middle of Thailand were arbitrary and a boring waste of time. I and many in our group were ';Wated'; out by that time. I felt trapped by this portion of the tour.
I have traveled extensively on my own to Europe, Asia, Southern Africa,etc. and lived five years in Munich Germany as a teenager. All tours...including Smartours...are bound to be somewhat generic, and they seem to feel the need ot expose you to every Wat, temple, shopping opportunitiy, jewelry factory etc etc. They don%26#39;t ever buy into the notion that ';less is more.'; Our guide knew a great deal about Buddhism, hero worshipped the King of Thailand, and said next to nothing about the politics and economics of the country. That bothered me, particularly in the long hours I spent riding the bus for three days listening to her drone on about the next Buddha image, or the next semi miracle performed by the King. It was a true Thai ';Chamber of Commerce'; presentation. That said, she was very well organized, a good problem solver, and a friendly soul.
All of these travel companies need to wake up and realize that the typical person who does these tours is not necesarily some ignorant nincompoop. Traveling is expensive, and tours can make it affordable for many curious folks who would otherwise find it impossible. Not all of us are interested in seeing twenty Buddhist Wats, when six or seven would teach us just as much, and allow us to stay interested in the subject.
I don%26#39;t want to be fed a bunch of hooey about how great their King is when it is obvious he lives luxuriously on the backs of millions of Thais who barely make a living. We were actually told by this guide that the King had created rain where there was drought, and a host of other infantile things. Come on, Smartours....Americans are tolerant of other peoples%26#39; beliefs, but we revolted against a King a couple hundred years ago. If your guides want to feed us the standard Thai party line, at least she should know something about our history when she conveys these fairy tales!
Having said that, it seems to be genuinely true that Thais like their king....there is all sorts of propaganda everywhere about him and his family, and the major tourist site in Thailand, the Grand Palace, shut down for several days when the King%26#39;s sister died around the New Year. Thais seem willing to support the royal fmaily%26#39;s preposterously luxurious lifestyle. So be it.....we Americans certainly throw away enough money on things far more dubious. I just never felt this was something any of us could talk about in Thailand.
Thailand is a beautiful country....but we spent narry a minute visiting a waterfall, a national park, or any kind of park or preserve on our trip. I and other wanted more time to relax, more time to get away from the canned tours, jewlery factories, jade factories, textile factories etc etc. Yes, we are Americans with disposable incomes, but we are not ALL a bunch of pre programmed, mornonic shopaholics. I%26#39;d ask Smartours to upgrade this tour...expect a little bit more from your clients, and a little bit less at the same time.
We took the Smatours Amazing Thailand tour in November. It was wonderful. We have traveled to several places around the world but this was our first time in Asia. We really enjoyed the Smartours format. We loved our time in Bangkok before the bus part of the tour began. We hired private guides for two full days there and had an excellent time. We did a tour of Bangkok and the Grand Palace one day with our private guide and another day the private guide took us to the floating market and tiger temple, both of which should not be missed!
After that, the bus tour was fabulous. Our Smartours guide was knowledgeable, pleasant and patient. We enjoyed all the ruins and the wats since each one is slightly different. We loved the monkey wat and enjoyed the pleasant stops for Thai iced coffee. We especially loved the stop at the mulberry paper making place where we made our own handmade paper with flower petals imbedded in them (these were later delivered to us in Chiang Mai and we also found the stop at the Buddah image factory very interesting.
We liked Chiang Rai and shopping near the border of Myanmar (where we found great bargains and lovely handicrafts) but found the hotel there to be disappointing. Chiang Mai was fabulous and the elephant camp was wonderful. It was an amazing experience to go for a ride on such a huge animal and then we made friends with a young elephant who used his trunk to take our hats on and off our heads. We also hired private guides for one day in Chiang Mai. We had a lovely day with that guide too. He took us to a celedon factory, wood carving village, the wat up on the mountain and to a secret hideaway for lunch in a restaurant overlooking a waterfall. He also drove us around the city and showed us several colleges that are there plus stopped at an orphange to deliver produce.
Hotels in Bangkok and Chiang Mai were wonderful and top notch, the hotels in the other small towns were ok and the only one that I did not like was the hotel in Chiang Rai. It was not terrible but it was dated and tired.
The people on the tour were nice and there was quite a mix of ages. Everything from twenty somethings to 70%26#39;s. The value that Smartours provided was unbeatable. The airfare alone would have cost almost as much as the entire trip cost through Smartours. We did as few of the extra tours as possible, instead doing research in advance and hiring our own guides. We felt like this made a difference since we did not get overwhelmed by the group togetherness and then we also had a few days to go at our own pace.
Make sure you indulge in a few good massages while you are there. You can%26#39;t beat the price or the experience. I did not care for Thai massage much but I am glad I tried it once. They are also very good at swedish style massage and I prefered that.
All in all, it was one of our best trips ever and we felt like the value was fantastic!
Dear Walker26,
I am planning a trip to Japan using Smartours and would appreciate your help. I need to know the name of the company that conducted the tour in Japan, or your tour guide and his email. I want to stay a few extra nights in Kyoto, at the Rihga Royal Hotel and I need some help with this. Thanks, Michael A. Miller, michaelamiller@optonline.net
