If you have been following our adventures, you know that we usually travel on our own. We like the freedom it gives us, but we also like the challenge of making our own arrangements. But for 2026 we decided we would try something new and go on our first tour. (We had, of course, taken guided day-trips and the like, but we had never done an actual tour.) And we found one that visited four countries in southeast Asia, three of which we had never been to and had long wanted to see: Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
We chose Intrepid Tours because they seemed to us to be eco-friendly and also to have a social conscience. They tend to avoid taking you by air, preferring trains and buses, or even boats. And you stay in local hotels, not big chains. They bring you to places where locals work to improve the condition of women and children. They give you a lot of time to yourself (i.e., they don’t over-schedule). And last but not least, they limit the tours to small groups.
Our first and third guides were excellent. Our second, for Vietnam, was pretty good, though he was young and still learning the ropes, so to say. Nonetheless, we were generally very satisfied with them. They were all local, and were interesting people in their own right.
The tour took 28 days, but in fact it combined three distinct tours: one for Thailand and Laos; one for Vietnam; and one for Cambodia. So we had three different guides on each of those tours. People came and went from country to country, although six of us did the entire trip. We were fortunate that the other four who did the complete circuit turned out to be lovely people. Three of them were British, one was German. During the first part of the trip, there was also a family from Australia whom we loved. (For most of the tour we were the only Americans.)
Naturally, it is much easier on a tour than on your own because someone takes care of all of your travel and accommodation. And when something goes wrong, other people have to fix it! For us, the real benefit was that with a tour we were able to do things that we wouldn’t have done on our own. And some of them were the highlights of the trip.
For example, in Laos we got up early one morning to give food to monks. We had to sit on the road where they beg, wear a particular sash and have the right kind of offering to give them. Also in Laos, we travelled by boat for two days down the Mekong river. We were the only people on the boat, aside from the family who owned the boat and which provided our meals. Perhaps we could have done both of these things on our own, but we doubt it.
Another unusual thing that we did was to stop at a market in Cambodia that specialised in bugs. Yes, that’s right, bugs. Cooked bugs of all sorts: cockroaches, grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, spiders, and many others. Not to mention frogs. All in big heaps on platters. The more adventuresome of us tried them, the others merely looked on with interest or disgust. We would probably never have found such a place on our own.
One of our more sombre ‘adventures’ was the visit in Phnom Penh (Cambodia) to the place where prisoners were held during the Pol Pot regime before they were sent to the killing fields. Our guide gave us a comprehensive history of how the prison (a converted school) operated. Again, one can learn the history, but it’s nice to have someone who really knows the material right there with you.
We were also able to visit restaurants in Vietnam and Cambodia that were dedicated to training young people from the countryside. These young people often receive no formal education, and so teaching them in the restaurant allows them to find jobs which would otherwise be difficult for them. And speaking of food, perhaps the most charming thing we did was visit the family of our guide in Vietnam, where his mother served us a delicious dinner!
And so on balance we are very glad that we did the tour. We met some nice people and we did some activities we would not otherwise have done. And naturally, now that we’ve seen these places, it will be much easier when we go back!
