Traditional tiled-roof pavilion with red lanterns and wooden columns at a Vietnamese temple complex, likely the Temple of.

Tailor-made

A trip built around your dates, not ours

Most trips we run are private and built from scratch. This page explains exactly how that works, what it costs, and how long each step takes, so you know what you are starting.

Plan my trip Start with a message

The process

Four steps, and how long each one takes

01
You send the basics
dates, party size and a rough idea — a list of places, a theme, or just "two weeks, first time, not too rushed". Ten minutes of your time.
02
We reply within one working day
with questions only where the answer changes the route, and a first day-by-day within two.
03
You mark up what you want moved
most trips go through two rounds; some go through five, which is fine and costs nothing.
04
You confirm
a 35 per cent deposit holds hotels and flights. 50 per cent 30 days before arrival, the final 15 per cent 7 days before.

What to send

What we need from you, and what we do not

We need four things to build a real route: your dates, your party (ages matter more than numbers), your arrival and departure airports if they are already fixed, and one sentence about pace — whether you would rather see six places briskly or four properly. Everything else is optional and can be decided later.

We do not need your passport numbers to quote, we do not need a budget figure before we show you anything, and we will not hold a quote hostage behind a phone call. If you would rather compare three operators in writing before speaking to any of them, that is a sensible way to buy a trip.

The quote

What a quote looks like

A day-by-day, one line per day, with where you sleep, what the day holds, how long the transfers take and which meals are included. Then a price table at three hotel tiers, with the per-person figure at your party size, and a separate list of optional extras with their prices — a cooking class, a private boat instead of a shared one, a second vehicle for a dawn start.

Hotel tier	What it means in practice	Typical share of the total
Tier 1 — simple	Clean family-run places, air conditioning, no pool, often the best hosts	25-35%
Tier 2 — comfortable	Four-star equivalent, pool, breakfast worth eating, central	35-50%
Tier 3 — the good ones	The handful in each town genuinely worth their rate	50-65%

Why we show three

Because the hotel line is the biggest single variable in a Vietnam quote, and an operator who shows you one tier is making that decision for you.

When not to

Where tailor-made is not the right answer

If you are one or two people, travelling in high season, and your list is the standard first-timer route — Saigon, Hoi An, Hanoi, the bay — then one of the eighty itineraries on this site is probably better value than a blank page, because everything on it is already priced and tested. Tailor-made earns its keep when something about your trip is genuinely unusual: an awkward date, a party with mixed mobility, a returning visitor who has already done the obvious, or a route that crosses a border.

It is also the wrong answer if you want to decide everything on the ground. Vietnam is easy to travel independently along the main coastal spine, and if that is the trip you want we will happily plan only the two or three hard parts and leave the rest to you.

Flexibility

Changes, before and during

Before you pay: unlimited changes, no fee, and we would rather do three rounds than have you book something you are not sure about. After the deposit: hotels and internal transport can usually be moved more than 30 days out at cost, and we do not add a change fee on top. Inside 30 days it depends entirely on what the supplier does, and we will show you their charge rather than an invented one.

During the trip: the day-by-day is a plan, not a contract you have to obey. If you fall in love with Hoi An and want a third night, tell your planner and we will move the rest. Sometimes it costs nothing, sometimes it costs a wasted hotel night, and you will know which before we do it.

Common questions

Questions travellers ask most

Does a tailor-made trip cost more than a packaged one?

At the same hotel tier and party size, usually within ten per cent either way. Private vehicles cost more than shared ones; cutting a night nobody wanted saves more than people expect.

How far ahead should I start?

Three months for high season, six weeks otherwise. The binding constraint is almost never us — it is the ten or twelve hotels in this country that are genuinely worth staying in and fill early.

Can you book only part of a trip?

Yes. Plenty of people book the delta and the far north through us and travel the middle independently. We will say which parts we think are worth handing over and which you can do yourself.

What if we are a group with different interests?

Very common, and it is mostly a vehicle problem rather than an itinerary problem. Two vehicles for one morning costs less than a compromise that suits nobody, and we will price both so you can choose.