Your guide Jack provided me a wonderful trip into rural Thailand. Our rafting trip and elephant trek were preludes to the highlight ….a day and night in a Hmong village. The people there were so welcoming and so delightful, I enjoyed every moment. Jack in particular is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide, and his English is nearly perfect !

For the adventurous traveler, I highly recommend this tour.

David John Frank
Associate professor of Sociology
Harvard University

Our stay in the Hmong village was an enormous adventure. We felt that we were accepted as equal and we were invited to take part in their way of living. Late in the evening around the camp fire we had an interesting exchange of views with four of the older men and two of their sons.....We took part in their service at church and my wife and my younger daughter presented a folk dance to them (I'm impressed - we normally don't perform).We will also try to write an article from our stay at the Hmong people for the local newspaper. If you have your Web page available within the next weeks we will include this in the article - if OK to you.

Thank you for arranging this special adventure for us.
Hilsen Oeyvin, Norway

Thank you very much!! I really enjoyed this trip!! I experienced many things. Cruising, night show (puppet), eating coconut's ice, coconut's juice, taking the shower outside, etc. All are beyond my expectation. I like them very much!! Thank you for taking care of us! And keep up the good work!!
Masaru Ikeda,
Tokyo University

I have really enjoyed seeing the traditional side of Thai life! Everyone has been so friendly and welcoming, and made us feel so at home. Our guides were very informatives and had a great sense of humour. They were very flexible and introduced Thai culture in a way that was easy to understand.
Lauren Inouye
Tokyo University

Thanks so much for leading us through this wonderful adventure ! It was truly a pleasure to observe & experience Thai life outside Bangkok. While these past couple days have been deliciously relaxing & peaceful, you somehow managed to also show us many interesting sites -The floating market, the temple, the coconut sugar factory, to name a few I feel the trip was superbly organized & executed.

Take care,
Jenny Breeden
Standford University, USA

We think this was a very nice trip for us. It was unusual I will say. It was
very good that you told us so much about everything before the trip. It is
good to be prepared for simple lifestyle, otherwise you will get surprised.
Now we knew that we would be eating the villager food and so on. We liked
it. It was simple but such a big experience for all of us, including the
children. It was not too much walking for the kids, they managed fine!
We slept ok and we really enjoyed the time we could spend with the people in the villages. We took a lot of photos, and we will send some copies to the
people.
So we like to thank you for a very nice and well organized tour. It gave us
memories for all our lifes!

May be you will hear from us again.....
Warm regards from all of us //
Madeleine Ekelyck

You are probably aware of our trip recently arranged between yourselves and Symbiosis of London. We wish to tell you how much we enjoyed the trip and the itinerary arranged by yourselves. Also we wish to make you aware of how much we enjoyed the service proved by “Poe” and the driver. Although the driver spoke little English, he was always very cheerful and happy to point out all the land marks he could. He didn’t seem to miss a thing – whether it was a village or house we should stop at or some land mark. He really knew the North of Thailand very well.

The service of Poe were wonderful. He was an excellent guide who gave of his best all the time. We could have asked no more of the service he offered. You might be aware that I am a Coeliac, and Poe had found out in advance of our trip all about the disease and about what I could and could not eat. It certainly made my holiday have someone who made sure that everything which I ate was safe for me to do so. We would very much like to make use of your service and hopefully Poe, when we make a return trip to Thailand and to Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar later this year.

Yours faithfully,

Lynne and Ray Hulme
England

This is what a trip/adventure/vacation should be like. Interesting, informative about culture and history, fun ,and run very smoothly with no worries.
Rohan Radhakrishna,
USA

""""Mr. Jack: Wow. He knows so much. And yet he was able to say "I don't know" when he didn't know. We learned so much. Jack is passionate about his country and the history and future of the hill tribe communities. He was very true to his convictions: we stayed in and saw all that was original. I must say that I'm glad we didn't go on a different trek. There were several advertised in Chaing Mai but they would not have been anything like what we did. And the only reason we could enjoy such a remarkable journey so much was because of our guide. We were comfortable letting him represent us to these communities. We trusted him"
Hal and Margot Genger ,
USA

I am now back at work in England after having a thoroughly enjoyable time in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos. After our meeting with you we spent a few days at Anchor Wat before flying off to Ubon. The guides, excursions and accommodation were all excellent. Our guide had a very good local knowledge and we were lucky to experience village life in Laos. The highlight of the trip was our stay on Don Khon. As we had missed Lanoka festival in Thailand, we were lucky that there was a large festival on Don Khon on that night (19th) so we had the chance to sample some Laos Laos with the local people.

I would thoroughly recommend this trip to anyone who wishes to visit Southern Laos but is limited with the time that they have to do it. It allows you to be a tourist, yet get involved enough in the culture to feel as if you are travelling on your own. Laos is a beautiful country, but the people are its biggest asset. We were greeted with nothing but genuine friendship during our visit.

Thank you for making this all possible within such a limited time

Zak
England

hello

we would like to thank you for the wonderful yunnantrip we had during the chinese springfestival in january 04. it was very well organized and we had the chance to see lots of impressive and memorable things!

i saw in your new shangri la program that you have cancelled all the dinners, which is probably a good idea. i think you now have the chance to choose your favorite restaurants and meals as long as you are able to speak a little mandarin. otherwise it's also interesting, at least for me, to take kind of surprise dinners...

we had a very good time, thank you!!

anna and felix
Switzerland

Thank you again for helping us arrange the cultural exchange to the Tha Ka Village. It was wonderful and both Poe and Dragon were great along with the people of the village and our hosts. Here are some of the pictures I took with my digital camera so I hope I attach them the correct way. Tanya and I have told all of our friends about the exchange and I found it to be the best part of my entire Thailand experience.

Thanks again, Tony Erway