darleneStacey
23 Apr 2025
Main thing, the tour description says 7-8 hours with White Water rafting, ATV, and jungle trek with flying foxes (never did see a flying fox and no one mentioned it) and waterfall with swimming, ATVS, Monkey cave, Temple, etc. and it was 11 hours.
We spent 1.5 hours picking up other guests (cool, it's a group tour), finally picked up our "guide" (the girl who checked us in was a JR Guide in Training and slept open mouthed the whole drive), and then 10 min later stopped to pick up our snack bags. The snack bags looked good... until we realized that all the snacks were expired. Nice. Drove another 90 minutes to get to the Elephant Rides for the other people in the tour. The "guide" didn't say a word during the drive. She sat in the front with the driver, and the jr guide continued her nap. Didn't talk about the area, points of interest, nothing.
Finally got there, and I have to tell everyone that Elephant riding is NOT ethical, and these poor elephants looked miserable. We were told that the elephant riding and ATVs would not be included in our tour (not sad about no elephant rides) so we would have to just wait around 30-45 minutes for each while the rest of the tour did them. Ummm, what?! So we waited 45 minutes until we could get ready for the rafting and were told we can go check out the "waterfall". The "jungle trek" is a literal 2 minute walk and the waterfall is a splash of water down a few rocks, and the pool at the bottom is not where you would swim and frolic. At all. Then we got our helmets and life jackets on, piled into the back of a truck, and then drove another 10 minutes to wait 25 minutes for the boats to be brought out, set up, etc. NOTHING was done ahead of time. There were other tours there also, so 15-ish rafts and about 70- 80 people milling about.
When we (finally) got the rafting underway, it was surprisingly fun. They open a dam to flood the river and the rapids were a lot of fun, the boat guides were funny and joking around, splashing everyone, turning it into bumper boats... not sure if it was safe, but it sure was fun. But it was 45 minutes (not the hour they advertise) and then we had to pile into the back of another truck and drive another 10 minutes back again. We had a decent buffet lunch, and then piled into our van to head to ATVing (30 min drive). The tour guides were eating when we arrived, so we had to wait around for 15-20 minutes for them to finish and get organized. Our guide actually did get us on an ATV when we showed her the tour description had that included, and it was... fine. Rode around a few tracks, slowly falling the tour leader, not really challenging or seeing any really scenery in the countryside, so that was disappointing. Just a few rutted paths through some trees off the side of the road, not ATVing THROUGH THE JUNGLE. It was... 20 minutes maybe? We then drove another 30-45 minutes to the Monkey Temple and Monkey cave (they are side by side at the same site). Our "guide" told us when to be back to the van (30 minutes), pointed out the toilets, and that was it. Didn't guide us through the area or talk about the history of the area, the temple, etc. So we toured the small market there, you can buy bags of corn and bananas to feed the monkeys, got a fruit smoothie, and then walked over to the tree area. The monkeys do come down the mountain face to the trees to take the food from your hands, so if you like monkeys, you can get up close to them... But they ARE wild animals, so don't touch them.
We met back at the van and drove 75 minutes to drop off the "guide" who again sat up front and didn't say a word during the drive while the Jr guide slept. Then the Jr guide hopped into the front, and we drove another 90+ minutes to drop off the other people and get back to our hotel. So we got picked up at 7:15am, dropped off at 6:15pm. 11 hours, with 3 hours of "Fun" including lunch, 8 hours were spent driving/waiting around. It was disappointing, and honestly not worth using a FULL day of your vacation to hang out in a van or waiting around for the other people to do activities, or for the activity to get organized and get going. Super disappointed.