Imprint review It’s hard to believe Jeri and I were on the same tour! Vietnam + Cambodia (though I did the complete “VAT” tour which included Thailand after Ankor Wat - Cambodia) Vietnam was my favorite part of the extended tour and our US based Imprint guide (Trish) was wonderful. I guess she did her job “too” well if Jeri couldn’t “figure out what her job was exactly”. She worked behind the scenes so well Jeri didn’t notice all the coordination and work required to assure we got where we needed to be and were able to enjoy our experiences. I don’t appreciate Jeri lumping me into her description by saying “no one could…” either. Did Jeri think things just magically got coordinated from day to day and the million pieces that need to come together just did? The local guides guide us through the experiences of their country, the Imprint guide coordinates all the leg work and care for the group. I’m aware of our tour mate that ended up with a bad room on board the Ha Long Bay overnight boat. I am not aware of all the details and hearing it second hand here is just poor form. Moving our tour mate was not ideal and I’m very sorry for his experience, but your anger directed at our guide is inappropriate and misrepresents this tour. I’d be curious to hear if our tour mate shares the same perspective of his experience as you do for him. There were some less than ideal issues with the Ha Long Bay boat…Vietnam is not the US , nor is it a Western European country. Things happen when we travel and sometimes our standards have to adjust. Sometimes you have to roll with it. The boat “social director” was definitely used to having people looking to party on his boat and this fell pretty flat with our group. I will admit I was disappointed by the “party scene” present in all the boats I could see overnight. Ours was quiet in comparison to some near us. The garbage floating on the bay the next morning was so disappointing for a UNESCO site. Sadly, tourism here has shifted toward a “party scene”. Thankfully the boat was only one night and our tour led us to much better, even more stunning places of natural beauty. Ha Long Bay is one of those places of notoriety so you “have” to include it and being on the water overnight was cool (except for said tour mate’s experience) … but so much of this trip was so much better than that one night! This was a trip of a life time and I was not disappointed. The variety of experiences, the cultural education, the grittiness and chaos of the cities, the poverty living next door to comfortable wealth, the organized chaos of traffic, the peaceful natural beauty, and the genuine welcoming kindness of the Vietnamese people - amazing. I felt our Imprint guide worked hard to try to get to know each of us and listened to concerns as they were brought up. She worked her tail off communicating, coordinating, making connections happen and making sure we knew what was happening….even as some tended to not listen with full attention when it was asked of them. Some other tour mates expressed in reviews how our Cambodia group (this was a 3 day “add on” for post-Vietnam and pre-Thailand travel) was too large. To be fair, having such a large group was NOT good and the tour operator/owner did apologize to us via email. It was shared during the trip that the original primary local guide in Cambodia last minute dropped out due to a medical emergency in the family. Much scrambling happened behind the scenes with the plan to split the large group into 2 smaller manageable groups for the day trips, but the “fill-in” last minute guide was not experienced enough to take half the group himself and so we were left with a less than ideal situation. World travel is sometimes difficult, emergencies happen, sometimes you have to adjust and roll with it. I still saw amazing things AND I experienced the ups as well as some of the downs of life in a foreign country. I’d recommend this Imprint trip to anyone, with the caveat that… this isn’t travel in Western Europe or the US, you gotta have some flexibilty patience, resiliency (and heat tolerance!) and if you do - you will be rewarded by most wonderful experiences. I’ve close friends who have taken a similar tour with another company and they have commented our experiences surpassed theirs with a hint of jealously in their voices. Imprint for the win!

This was a great itinerary, covering a lot of beautiful areas. The food was delicious, and there were a lot of included experiences and meals. We had a wonderful time.

Excellent trip! I learned so much about the people, history and culture of Vietnam. Our Imprint guide, Trish and local guide, Bon were fantastic. I especially appreciated the personal stories that Bon shared about himself and his country.

The tour is advertised as having 24-26 people. There were 28 on the Vietnam portion of the tour and 38 on the Cambodia portion of the tour making it unfeasible to take such a large crowd through the various temples and everyone able to see or hear the guide. The Halong Bay boat was definitely substandard and it didn't seem as though it was prequalified. The tour operator seemed to think he was entertaining 20 year olds. Additionally, one of the single rooms was uninhabitable and rather than the tour manager (who no one could figure out what her job was exactly) switching her room (one of the best on the ship) with a paying customer, he had to stay on another ship for the evening. The boat ran out of drinking water more than once and the maintance person had the day off. It didn't even seem as though they were expecting us and it was thrown together at the last minute. I would not recommend Imprint to my friends and do not feel it was worth the high price.

Trish did a good overall job of managing the group and the guides, Bon and Sophea were knowledgeable, enthusiastic, approachable and personable. The cooking class in Vietnam and the cultural show in Siem Reap stood out for us. The hotels were very good. The boat on Halong Bay and the homestay were a little rustic for me, though my wife found the latter to be fine. It seemed that there was not as much free time as with the other Imprint tour we had taken, which was a negative for us. I know we returned to the hotel later than anticipated a couple of times, which may have helped to cause this. We did not like that 12 people were added to the tour for the Cambodia extension. For us it made the group unwieldly and negatively impacted the group dynamic that had developed over the Vietnam portion of the tour. It was less than ideal seeing the temples in a group of 38 people.