Considering going to Vietnam with Intrepid. Has anyone experience of this?

[SaraCrewe06]

Never been to Vietnam before. DCs are leaving/have left and this will be our first trip without them for 28 years!
The most adventurous trip I’ve taken was inter railing many years ago. I like the idea of a group and a tour leader. We’re both 57.

Why not ? I haven’t done much travel so would prefer an organised trip myself - more expensive , less stress

We did a trip similar to their SE Asian loop / adventure (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand - c.21 nights) with another tour operator about 18m ago. We enjoyed Cambodia and Laos more than Vietnam, but found it all to be a really good holiday.
Quality of the guides made a difference; we had an excellent tour leader and then local guides joined in each major location - who did vary in their quality.
If travelling that far again, I would definitely go back to Cambodia (particularly Siem Reap / Angkor Wat).

I love Intrepid tours. We had a great trip to Vietnam a couple of years ago. We are late 60s so we chose the comfort tour. There were 8 of us in the party and the guide was wonderful. Neither of us speak the language so we chose to do an organised trip. It was very well organised, we packed a lot in. Highly recommended. We have another trip booked with them to Borneo later this year.

Intrepid is a good company.
You can do it yourself in Vietnam easily as above said.
What time of the year as it may also impact your trip?

I went to Vietnam/ Cambodia with Riviera so more relaxed than Intrepid. I have been elsewhere with Intrepid and they were excellent in looking after people.

We went to Vietnam with Intrepid for our honeymoon and they were fantastic. We did the premium tour- I highly recommend it.

We loved Vietnam.

We organised our trip ourselves because we didn’t want to be in a group, but two different friends went with Intrepid and really rated them.

I’m mid 50s and did a solo trip to Vietnam last year with Exodus which was fantastic. I’m sure Intrepid will be v similar- Google reviews to be sure. You’ll have an amazing time. Our guide was brilliant.

We did a Vietnam trip with intrepid, it was great! I liked the ease of having so much planned for us and not having to navigate public transport etc. We are in our 30s but the group ranged from late 20s to early 70s and everyone got on well.

Thanks all for the positive reviews!
Still feels a bit scary..although I’m quite an adventurous eater, the idea of getting g food poisoning in a foreign country petrified me.
DCs are not helping me by showing me TikToks of people eating live squid and fried tarantula in Vietnam!

which Intrepid holiday is it, OP, do you want to post a link to your itinerary.

I was in VN for 3 weeks earlier this year on another tour provider trip and some work. Our group was age 52-63 so you're spot on the right age. Almost all couples.

No encounters or offers or sightings of live squid or tarantula.

The wifi was amazing, better than I'd expect in European hotels.

about:blank source:%20Intrepid%20Travel
https://share.google/qNDTQ6DezRYSnpWjH

Hope that works.

Not used intrepid, but often use their trip itineraries for inspiration.
Have been to Vietnam - awesome country, amazing food, no live squid, no sickness.
Use bottled water, avoid ice unless made with bottled water.

There are much nicer places to go than Vietnam. I spent six weeks travelling around Vietnam. Some of it is pretty some of the little towns are nice but otherwise it’s not the greatest place to go.
india was better.
so was Africa.

We spent 3 months each year in Vietnam for 6 years and also did the same in India and I much prefer Vietnam. We did them individually and travelled everywhere by train but have done a couple of Wendy Wu tours in China and Australia and they were fine, did like the company of the other people on the tour at meal times etc.

I have not been to Vietnam but have been to Laos, Thailand and Cambodia on a self organised holiday.

it’s fine. Well trodden tourist trail, the locals eat stuff we don’t but loads of tourist restaurants as well.

I really enjoyed the trip with Intrepid, met some lovely people and separately LOVED Vietnam. A couple of things to be aware of from my personal experience. The overall experience- organisation, hotels etc was great, there were a lot of add-on trips which I didn't do as they were exorbitantly expensive. On one occasion a trip was offered for 90 Dollars which was basically just a walk. I googled how to get there and did it for 5 dollars on my own. The other thing that bothered me was the standard of restaurant. It seemed that those chosen were not the best or most authentic, but those with less exotic options and generally more touristy. You're not obliged to eat with the group every night and I often had a much better and cheaper meal when I found somewhere myself. Certainly wouldn't put me off doing it again though, I'm sure you'll have a great time.

We did the family version of that trip with Intrepid OP. It was excellent. We were with an amazing group of people and I loved every minute.

Thanks all.
Do you get time to decompress/relax? Even on a fly and flop holiday, I enjoy an hour of down time in my hotel room, reading, having a cup of tea.

I’ve just turned 60 and going to Vietnam and Cambodia in November. I’ve never travelled (holidays but not travel) didn’t even interrail when younger.

we’ve organised it ourselves- time will tell but I’m confident

The quality of the guide is a big one - we took an organised trip earlier in the year and the guide, whilst lovely and helpful, delivered repeated, over-detailed extensive monologues, which at times were excruciatingly painful and you couldn't always get away from him as he talked for hours on the coach too. Noise cancelling earphones were useful. His torturous speeches bonded the group in a bunker mentality. It was our first group tour experience, but it's not the first time we've had a guide who was painfully dull, it was the first time they have accompanied us for days on end.

Someone else mentioned the food - we thought we'd be able to side step the tour dinners as they weren't included but it was a lot harder to do that than we imagined - the bus stopped in the middle of nowhere with one restaurant or we got back to our hotel too late to go out or the hotel was in the middle of nowhere. We'd have preferred more freedom to choose our evening meal - but it just didn't work out that way. The food wasn't bad but it wasn't great and that was disappointing, as food is a big part of our travelling adventure.

The people we met in the group were mostly great though and they really elevated the experience - we were accompanied by one person who complained about everything, insisted on english food, complained about her mattress, the quality of the hotel etc - in the end I felt very sorry for her, she was totally out of her depth and must of been having a totally miserable trip.

I'm amused how much of OP's tour is same as what I did, there really is a "greatest hits" list (!) The main place OP's going to that I didn't visit was Ninh Binh.

Any night when evening meal is not included: you're on your own to be an Introvert. In fact, even when dinner is included, you may be able to skip meeting up for that meal if you aren't hungry or would prefer to try street food or just have pot noodles in your room. Or get to come home early because often the restaurant will be walking distance from hotel or actuall hotel restaurant. OP's itinerary is always in town/city for evening meal except the Ha Long bay cruise and even that meal can be abbreviated to escape to your room early.

Traffic in the cities is horrendous so they will try to not drive you around within cities more than they have to.

You can contact Intrepid and ask how much time you'll have to recharge between finishing the day activities and meeting up for dinner... I found Guide would negotiate with us and judge what group was up for, in the timings for evening meals.

My reading of OP;s itinerary is there are several 'free' afternoons to self plan or decompress, in addition to some time off in evenings.

@Findyourdomain , I'm curious to hear about what your food was like, why you were disappointed.

I found VN food was less veg/fibre than I'm used to, plus I don't like white rice, white (rice) noodles or white bread. Wee problem, in that whole grain is almost not existent. On the plus side, many of our (on tour group) lunch meals were 6 courses (one course was fruit and one was rice, but rest were nearly always vegetable-full and wonderfully freshly made diverse dishes). And the fruit was amazing, dragon fruit, fresh pineapple, mango & star apples etc. Beer was $1 / can which kept the group happy.

The only medicore food we had was breakfast on the Halong Bay boat. Dinner on the boat had been nice, though. One hotel breakfast was also a little meh. I discovered a love of watermelon juice at other hotels.

My days in VN on work trip, we went to several Naice restaurants ... I liked this posh food less than the guided tour food, actually. Problem for me was a lot of pepper in the posh dishes, sometimes too strong for me. There was precisely one "weird" dish and only at one meal, which was jellyfish. But also at least 7 other things on the table at the same time so easy to ignore the jellyfish.

Well aren't you cheery? Travel is my passion and among very many countries visited, I've been to Vietnam, India and several African countries. And I enjoyed Vietnam very much.