Tours · Booking

How to book, step by step

From the first form to the first early morning at a temple gate: what we ask, what we send back, and what happens between confirmation and arrival.

Plan my trip See prices

The four steps

01
Send the form
Dates or a month, party size, the sites you care about, mobility or dietary needs.
02
Receive a draft
A day-by-day plan with site hours, named hotels and a line-by-line quote, by email.
03
Revise
Change what does not suit you. We rework the plan and the quote until it does.
04
Confirm
Written confirmation, payment, then guide briefings, tickets and your travel file.

Everything happens in writing, by email to the address you give on the form. That keeps a record of every change for both sides, which matters on a multi-country trip with several internal flights.

What to tell us in the first message

The form at the bottom of this page asks for five things. The more of the optional fields you fill in, the closer the first draft will be. The details that change a plan most:

Dates or at least the month. Season decides which sites can be done well and at what cost.
Who is travelling. Ages, if there are children; anyone who finds steps or heat hard.
The sites that matter. Name them, or name a period: Cham, Khmer, Nguyen, Lane Xang.
Hotel level. Deluxe rooms or suites, and whether a historic building matters more than a pool.
Fixed points. Flights already booked, a wedding to attend, a date you must be home.

What the draft looks like

A draft itinerary from us reads like the tour pages on this site: one entry per day, with the time we aim to reach each site and why, the hotel by name, the meals included, how long you will be in the vehicle and how far you will walk. Alongside it, the quote broken into hotels, vehicle, guides, tickets, flights and extras, as described on the prices page.

If your request is close to one of our set journeys, the draft starts from it: the UNESCO Indochina fifteen days, the central Vietnam week, the Angkor journey or the Laos journey.

From confirmation to departure

Confirmation. We send written confirmation of every service, with the payment terms that apply. The deposit, balance and cancellation rules, the payment methods and their fees are all written on that confirmation before you pay anything.
Guide briefings. Each site guide receives your interests and anything you have read, so the conversation starts at your level.
Tickets and timings. Where sites sell timed or advance tickets, we buy them. We recheck opening hours against the site managers’ notices before you travel.
Your travel file. A document with each day, each hotel, each guide’s name, and the dress rules at the religious sites you will visit, drawn from our temple etiquette guide.
On the ground. Your driver and guide meet you on arrival. Changes during the trip go through them, and we confirm by email.

Things we cannot do

Be aware

We do not arrange visas or sell travel insurance, and we cannot promise a domestic flight schedule in Laos that the airline has not yet published. We will tell you plainly when an itinerary depends on something outside our control.

We also do not hold space on spec. Hotels and flights are booked after you confirm, so a long gap between draft and confirmation can mean re-quoting, especially for December to February.

Plan your trip

Ready to start?

Send the form below. We reply by email to the address you give.

Send the form

Common questions

Questions travellers ask most

How far ahead should we book?

For December to February, book several months ahead for the widest hotel choice. Outside that season, less notice usually works.

Can we talk through the plan rather than write?

We work by email so every change is recorded. If something is hard to put in writing, describe it as fully as you can and we answer each point in our reply.

What happens if a flight is cancelled during the trip?

We rebook the ground arrangements around the new flight. Costs caused by the airline are usually claimable from the airline or your insurer; we provide the paperwork.

Can we book only part of a journey?

Yes. A single country or a single site with a specialist guide is fine, as long as the arrangement is private.