Six steps from a first email to the car at the airport
Booking a three-week private journey is a sequence, not a transaction. Six steps run from your first email to the driver holding a board at the airport, and the whole thing normally takes four to eight weeks of calendar time with perhaps three hours of your attention inside it.
The six steps
Your first enquiry
Four things make the first reply useful: the month or the exact dates, the number of travellers and their ages if any are under sixteen, the two places you refuse to leave out, and a day-rate band from the pricing page. Anything else — interests, pace, whether anyone dislikes flying — helps, but those four are what a routing sketch is built from.
A routing sketch within three working days
Back comes a route with night counts, the flights and drives that hold it together, and a land-only price band. No hotel names yet. This is the stage for arguing about shape: too many stops, not enough beach, a country you would rather drop. Most sketches are rewritten once here and it costs nothing.
The named-hotel itinerary
Once the shape is agreed, the itinerary arrives day by day with every property named and the room category stated, drive times and distances on each transfer, flight numbers where they are already fixed, and a firm price per person for your party size. This is the document you would sign.
Two free revisions
Two full rewrites are included: swap hotels, add or remove nights, move a flight to a train, reorder the countries. Beyond two we keep going, but at that point we usually ask for a call instead, because a third written revision normally means the shape is still wrong rather than the detail.
Deposit and balance
A 30 per cent deposit confirms the journey and releases the holds on hotels, domestic flights and any cruise cabin. The balance falls due 45 days before departure. Cancellation refunds step at 90, 60 and 45 days, and the ladder is printed in the quote before you sign it.
Visas, documents and the final pack
After the deposit we send the visa position for your passports and the three arrival cards you file yourself. Around 21 days out the final pack arrives: hotel vouchers, flight tickets, driver and guide names with phone numbers for each country, a printed day sheet and a 24-hour number that reaches a person in the region rather than a call centre.
The calendar, which is stricter than the process
That window is dry in all four countries at once, which is why it is the one everybody wants. The constraint is not our capacity — it is that the good Lan Ha Bay cabins and the Amansara-class rooms in Siem Reap are taken first, often eight to ten months ahead, and once they are gone the journey is rebuilt around what is left rather than around what you asked for.
Outside that window the lead times relax. For March to May, three to four months is comfortable. For June to September, two months is usually enough, and a well-built journey is still possible at six weeks if the route avoids central Vietnam.
- Christmas and New Year: book by June. Many properties in Siem Reap, Hoi An, Luang Prabang and on Koh Samui impose compulsory gala dinners on 24 and 31 December, typically USD 90 to USD 250 per person, and rooms over those dates carry minimum-stay rules.
- Any route with a Mekong ship: book six to nine months ahead. Seven-night sailings between Siem Reap and Ho Chi Minh City run on fixed dates with a small number of cabins, and the ships are not interchangeable.
- Any route using the Vientiane–Luang Prabang train: station ticket windows open only three days ahead and second class sells out in the dry season, so seats have to be bought through an agent well in advance.
- Central Vietnam in September, October or November: possible, but Hoi An floods most years and October and November are the worst of it. The itinerary gets a buffer day or the route changes.
What we need from you, and when
| Stage | What you send | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiry | Month, party size and ages, two fixed places, budget band | Any time |
| Sketch agreed | Confirmation of shape and standard | Within about a week |
| Deposit | 30 per cent, plus full passport pages | At confirmation |
| Visas | Applications filed by you, copies sent to us | 30 – 60 days out |
| Balance | Remaining 70 per cent | 45 days before departure |
| Arrival cards | TDAC, Cambodia e-Arrival, Lao LDIF | Within days of arrival |
| Final pack | Nothing — it comes to you | About 21 days out |
Passport pages are needed early because names on domestic flight tickets have to match them exactly, and a correction after ticketing costs a reissue fee in every country on the route.
What happens on the ground
A driver meets each arrival with a board and a phone number you already have. In every country a national guide licensed there joins for the touring days, and hands over at the border or the airport to the next one. The day sheet in the final pack lists the pickup time for every morning, the drive time and distance for every transfer, and what is included in each meal.
Driving days are capped at five hours. Where a route cannot honour that cap, the leg gets flown, split across two days, or moved to rail — Hue to Da Nang over the Hai Van Pass takes two to three hours by train and is worth taking for its own sake. Nothing on our itineraries requires a night bus.
Send the four things and start the clock
Month, party size, two fixed places, budget band. A routing sketch comes back within three working days.
Questions travellers ask most
How far ahead should we book?
For mid-November to early February, be talking to us by July — the good Lan Ha Bay cabins and the Amansara-class rooms in Siem Reap go first. For March to May, three to four months. For June to September, two months is usually enough. Any route with a Mekong ship needs six to nine.
What happens if we change our minds after the deposit?
Small changes are made at cost: a hotel swap, an extra night, a different room category. Large changes after the deposit — a different country, a different month — are treated as a cancellation and rebooking, because the supplier holds are already paid down. The refund ladder steps at 90, 60 and 45 days and is in the quote you sign.
Do you handle our visas?
No, and no honest operator should. Every country in the region now takes applications directly from the traveller, and the three arrival cards — Thailand’s TDAC, Cambodia’s e-Arrival and the Lao LDIF — are free and must be filed by you. What we send is the exact position for your passports, the official URLs, and the dates to file by. Any site charging a fee for an arrival card is not an official one.
Who do we call at 2 a.m. in Luang Prabang?
A number in the final pack that reaches a person in the region, not an answering service in another time zone. Each country also has its own guide and driver with their mobile numbers printed on the day sheet, so the first call is usually a local one and takes thirty seconds.
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Tell us about the journey you have in mind
Dates, party size and the places you care about are enough to start. You get a draft route and an indicative price, not a brochure.