03 Oct 2019
Tripadvisor has very good review of this local tour guide but i can only said we were disappointed by the tour guide and the service.
First of all, we also booked the Ninh Binh private taxi and Ha Long Bay day tour with them. It was clear that after payment of deposit, the follow up was slow. Before i made the booking, all questions were answer very instant, but after payment, the replies were much slower and sometimes they just simply skip the questions which they do not feel like answering.
The Ninh Binh private taxi driver was good, so was the Ha Long Bay day tour (which was actually by GO ASIA TOUR). Very satisfied by these 2 but totally disappointed by the city tour.
When i asked who will be our tour guide a week before my trip, the planner said will furnished me information when nearer to the date. When i asked again 2 days before my trip, they said they will let me know 2 days before my trip. Can you understand how frustrated i am. I was with my dad, i need to plan the timing so not to exhaust him for this trip. The planner was clearly not helpful since perhaps this is a free tour.
The 2 tour guides were very bad in directions, telling us to visit places all over the places. They have to relied on google map which i can do so too. In the end, we are the one that have to dictate to them where to go first so not to make rounds and rounds. Even using the google map, they will still bring us to the wrong direction. If we are not paying attention, we will end up walking one big round when the place is just around the corner.
The guides are just student which just pour out information straight from the book, telling us about history of attraction. And they both said the exact same thing to us twice. When we asked for restaurant suggestion, they have no idea at all and just simply pointed one restaurant not even knowing what menu they have or if is nice. When in the end we ended up in one restaurant, we said we like to try bun cha, they just straight away order bun cha for all without consulting us. The menu in the restaurant is plantiful, they didn't even bother to let us have a look first and decide if we wanted more varieties. Luckily we asked and stopped them, if not we will end up all eating the same dish. If i were to say anything good about them is perhaps they are friendly.
Is my first day in Hanoi and my family's first trip to vietnam and we have to bear with such bad tour guide which have good review on Tripadvisor, i was clearly disappointed.
I will never recommend AZ local tour to any of my friends even though i know it may just be my luck to get such poor planner and guide.