27 Apr 2023
Unfortunately as is the case across Vietnam, many of the stops on this tour made us feel a little uncomfortable (and we weren't alone in feeling that) - from the questionable ethics of the tour guide, through to the housing conditions of the animals along the way. Maybe we should have expected this given the cheap price of the day, but I wouldn't expect Viator to be so willing to support the stops.
Great parts:
- pongour waterfalls
- group size was small
- linh an pagoda was nice
- good pace of day
Not so great parts:
- The first stop was for weasel coffee, which whilst tasty coffee highlighted some pretty basic living conditions for the weasels in bare concrete boxes with tin roofs. The same place also offered elephant rides, which made us extremely uncomfortable that we were supporting this by visiting.
- Bee and honey farm: this wasn't advertised at the time of booking, and it turned out one of the visitors on the tour was extremely allergic of bees and therefore pretty scared to be taken. The tour guide really didn't seem to care at all despite the group saying we didn't have to go.
- Lunch was pretty basic and definitely charged at tourist price (100,000 pp)
- The cricket farm also demonstrated some horrible living conditions for animals - in this case rabbits, crocodiles and guinea pigs in inhumane cages.
- The tour guide had pretty basic English so we didn't exactly learn anything, as we would have hoped to on a tour - there was also two languages in the group so we each got half the story