Aerial view of a mountain village with terraced fields and winding roads in Ha Giang.

Across Indochina

How this company actually works

This page describes the machinery behind a trip: who holds the vehicle and guide contracts, who answers your message at 22:00 in Luang Prabang, where the limits sit, and which enquiries we send elsewhere.

Plan my trip See how a price is built

travellers, hard cap: 12
countries, one operator: 3
planner per trip, start to finish: 1

What we do, without the adjectives

Across Indochina designs private itineraries and runs set departures capped at twelve travellers, in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Planning happens in our own office. Driving, guiding and boat work is contracted by us directly in all three countries. From the first email to the last airport transfer, one planner stays on your file and knows the whole of it.

That is the entire model. There is no white-label partner operating Laos while we operate Vietnam, no franchise layer taking a cut in the middle, and no handover from a sales desk to an operations desk the day after you pay a deposit.

We do not publish a founding date, a staff count or a total number of guests served, because those figures are unverifiable from outside and every company in this business inflates them. What can be checked is on this page instead: what we contract, what we buy, what we refuse, and what we put in writing. If a number matters to your decision, ask for it on the contact page and we will answer it in an email with our name on it.

Children gather outside a mud-walled house in a rural village in Ha Giang, with limestone mountains behind. — Day one of a private itinerary, Hanoi old quarter

What we hold ourselves, and what we buy

The difference between an operator and a reseller is not marketing language. It is which contracts sit in which filing cabinet, because that determines who can fix a problem at 15:00 on a Tuesday without asking someone else for permission.

Vehicles and drivers

Contracted directly by us in Hanoi, Hue, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh City, Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, Luang Prabang and Vientiane. The driver who collects you on day nine works to our contract, not to a subcontractor's. When a road closes, the person moving your car is in our office.

Guides

Engaged by us by name, day by day, in each country. We know which guide is on your trip before you land, and the name appears in your final documents. A guide who gets three complaints in a season stops getting work from us.

Boats and cruise cabins

Cabins in Lan Ha Bay and the longtail and slow boats in Laos are contracted directly with the boat operators. Nothing goes through a bed bank, which is why we can tell you which boat you are on rather than a category name.

Hotels, which we buy rather than own

Hotels are the one link we purchase. We hold contracted rates in our own name with the properties we use most and book everything else direct. We say which is which when a hotel is the reason a quote is high.

One planner, from the first email to the last transfer

The person who reads your first message writes your itinerary, builds your quote, books your hotels and answers your message from a hotel terrace three months later. They are named in the first reply you get.

The cost of that is honest: your planner is asleep for part of your day, and if they are on leave in the week you write, the reply comes from a colleague who has read the file rather than instantly from the same person. The benefit is that nobody ever tells you that a detail you agreed in April is not on their system in November.

While you are travelling, a second number covers the region 24 hours. It is answered by someone with your itinerary open, not by a call centre reading a booking reference.

The twelve-traveller cap, and what it costs you

Set departures stop at twelve travellers. We do not add a thirteenth to fill a booking, and we do not merge two under-filled departures into one bus.

Twelve is not a marketing round number. It is the point at which a group stops fitting into one boat in Lan Ha Bay, one restaurant table in Hoi An, and the range of one guide's voice inside Angkor Thom. Above it, the day becomes a queue: thirteen people waiting for the fourteenth at every stop.

What that costs you is money. A group of twelve carries a lower per-person price than a group of six, and a coach operator running thirty people undercuts us by a wide margin on any route you care to compare. If price per day is the deciding factor, they will win, and we would rather you knew that here than after three rounds of quotes.

Why there are no customer reviews on this site

Every review on a tour operator's own website is chosen by that operator. We select them, we crop them, and we do not publish the trip that went badly in October. A page of five-star quotes tells you only that we know how to build a page of five-star quotes, and you already assumed that when you arrived.

So we do something more useful and more uncomfortable for us. Ask, and we will put you in touch with a past guest who travelled a route close to yours, from your own country, and let you talk to them directly by email or phone without us in the conversation.

01
You ask, at any stage
Before you pay anything, or after the first quote. Say which route and which nationality you would like to speak to.
02
We ask the guest first
Nobody is put on a list. We write to two or three past travellers, explain who is asking, and only pass on the details of those who agree.
03
You talk, we are not copied in
They get your email address or a phone time. We are not on the thread and we do not ask afterwards what was said.
04
You hear the unedited version
Including the hotel that disappointed them, the drive that was longer than we said, and whether the thing we fixed was fixed well.

The honest limit

We can usually find a match for British, Australian, American, French, Dutch and German travellers, because that is who has travelled with us most. For some nationalities and some routes there is nobody to introduce you to, and in that case we will say so rather than offer a loose substitute.

What we are not good at

Four kinds of work we turn down, repeatedly, because the result would be worse than what another company would give you.

Groups above twelve. A party of eighteen needs a coach, a second guide and a different hotel contract structure. We do not run that operation, and a large group squeezed into our model gets a worse trip at a higher price than a specialist coach operator would charge.
Budgets under about USD 120 per person per day on land. Below that figure the only remaining levers are cutting guide days, moving to hotels we have not inspected, and putting you on shared transfers. We have run those trips and they are not worth the airfare you paid to get here.
Languages other than English and French. Our guide teams work in those two. We will not promise a German or Japanese-speaking guide and then hunt for a freelancer three days before arrival, which is how that promise is normally kept in this region.
Travellers who do not want a guide at all. If your plan is to move alone with a rail pass and a hotel list, our structure adds cost without adding much. A good hotel booking and a train reservation will serve you better, and we will say so in the first reply.

What you can hold us to

Four commitments, each of which is checkable rather than felt: a named planner in the first reply; an itemised quote showing hotel, vehicle, guide and flight costs as separate lines; a written itinerary with drive times we have measured rather than copied; and a cancellation table published before you pay, not after.

Plan My Trip

Ask us something specific

The awkward questions get the fastest answers here — group size, a hotel you have doubts about, or a past guest you would like to speak to.

Write to us

Common questions

Questions travellers ask most

Can I see your operating licence?

Ask for it by email and we will send the licence details in writing, together with the company name the licence is held in, so you can check it rather than take a number printed on a web page on trust.

Can I speak to someone who has travelled with you before?

Yes, and we prefer it to reviews. Tell us the route and the country you are writing from, we ask two or three past guests for permission, and you talk to whoever agrees without us on the thread.

If nobody who matches your route and language has agreed to be contacted, we will tell you that plainly instead of offering a loose substitute.

Do you use subcontractors in Cambodia and Laos?

We contract drivers, guides and boats directly in both countries, as we do in Vietnam. Hotels are booked rather than owned. Specialist activities such as a cooking school or a permitted temple photographer are run by the specialist, and those appear as named lines in your quote.

What happens if my planner is unavailable during my trip?

The 24-hour number for the region is answered by someone with your itinerary in front of them, and it is a different line from the planning number for exactly this reason. Your planner also leaves a written handover for every trip in the field.