22 days/20 nights Luxury Tour Vietnam and Cambodia a suggestive Tour rich in emotions. You will visit many archeological sites and museums, an itinerary dedicated to those who want only the best from the holiday. Tours rich in local history, local excursions only on individual basis with professional Italian speaking local guides at exclusive use throughout the trip and scheduled flights in Business Class for intercontinental flights.
Luxury Tour Vietnam and Cambodia by Travel Design, the Tour Operator specialized in customized honeymoon trips, is a trip of the highest level for the quality of the services included, from business class flight for intercontinental flights to the most luxurious hotels. Excursions only on individual basis and Italian speaking local guides at exclusive use throughout the tour.
Luxury Travels are our jewel in the crown and for this amazing Luxury Tour Vietnam and Cambodia of 22 days and 20 nights; we offer you the best of our deluxe services.
Vietnam is an amazing destination of about 4000 years of history rich in culture and traditions. Landscapes range from different type of beaches and dunes seeming to caress a deep blue sea to romantic exotic horizons, from green hills to the crystal waters of waterfalls, lakes and rivers that lead to the South China Sea. Unique sceneries in a succession of Buddhist pagodas, colonial houses, picturesque villages and lively cities.
Cambodia is a spiritually intense and mysterious country, wrapped in the secrets of the thick jungle and crossed by the Mekong River.
Multitudes of unpolluted beaches, ancient temples of sumptuous imperial cities and numerous architectural and landscape treasures.
A country with a thousand-year history that boasts a very rich cultural tradition. For those who wish a holiday of high quality, among the East Tours, the exclusive Luxury Tour of Vietnam and Cambodia is an amazing experience in the Far East of luxury.
We are a twenty years’ experience Tour Operator in designing tailor-made luxury travel and expert of the best destinations in the world. For your Vietnam and Cambodia Luxury Tour, we select the best top class service hotels. We also make use of the assistance of expert tour guides to ensure high quality standards of our service and offer travel itineraries always new.
22 DAYS / 20 NIGHTS EXTREMELY DELUXE TOUR VIETNAM & CAMBODIA
Travel Plan
1° DAY: WORLD – BANGKOK
Departure with scheduled flight Thai from your Home Airport. We suggest arriving at least three hours before departure. Flying in Business Class our customers can wait to the lounge before boarding. Meals and overnight on board.
DAY 2: BANGKOK – HANOI
Morning arrival and connecting Thai flight to Hanoi where you will arrive after a 2-hour flight. Completion of custom formalities and visa procedures at the airport, the guide welcomes you at the exit of the airport. Transfer (about 1 hour drive) to the Sofitel Metropole Legend Hotel (Grand Luxury Room). Check in at 2 p.m. Rest of the morning devoted to relax and rest.
Hanoi is the oldest capital of Southeast Asia: born before Bangkok, Yangon, Tokyo and Beijing. Once rich in temples and pagodas in the last century it was transformed by the French into a large colonial city with wide tree-lined avenues, lakes, green parks and villas reminiscent of a French town of the 1930s. Today the city is a synthesis of lifestyles: it thus appears among the alleys and the elegant glimpses of the old city along the avenues of the restored colonial center of the Buddhist temples. In the afternoon visit to Hanoi, center city: “One Pillar Pagoda” built at the beginning of eleventh century, Ho Chi Mihn Mausoleum (you can see it from outside) and his house on stilts in which the political leader lived and worked from 1958 to 1968. Tour ends with the spectacular Water Puppets Show a classic representation that dates back centuries and has a strong reference to Vietnamese folklore. The satirical character of the show reached its final stage in the seventeenth century to mark the rebirth of the rural consciousness.
The series of water mirrors in the paddy fields flooded by the Red River was one of the factors of the origin in the tenth century of an exclusively Vietnamese genre, the Roi Nuoc, or aquatic puppets representing scenes of popular life and episodes of national history.
The figures that involve the set are from the simplest characters of everyday village life to the fantastic shapes of the water snake, of the dragon, of the phoenix that with their colors and their fast mutability make of a simple performance a true masterpiece.
Water puppets are the true cultural expression of the Vietnamese people, they have gone through a thousand years of history and have arrived to us not as old things but with a quantity of actuality and a modernity of absolutely surprising performance.
Dinner in the hotel.
DAY 3: HANOI
Breakfast in the hotel. A full day city tour: The Lake of the Restored Sword with the Ngoc Son Temple, the interesting Museum of Ethnology, and Literature Temple founded in 1070 dedicated to Confucius to pay homage to scholars and writers. Hoa Lo Prison Museum used by French colonists for political prisoners and later by North Vietnam during the war against Americans who had sarcastically nicknamed it “Hanoi Hilton”. The day ends with the visits of Quan Than Temple of the seventeenth century, a magnificent example of the art of woodcarving and the Tran Quoc Pagoda on the West Lake. Lunch at local restaurant. Free Dinner.
DAY 4: HANOI – HALONG BAY
Breakfast in the hotel. Early morning departure to the famous Halong Bay (UNSECO World Heritage site) where you can embark on the “Violet” junk boat to discover enchanting sceneries that wind through the myriad of islands, sea stacks inside which caves open and where stalagmites create extravagant and spectacular sceneries. The junk boat will make some stops to visit the large karst cave Tien Ong and the floating village of Cua Van. The guide leaves the customers at the port of Halong. Lunch and dinner on board.
Note: We suggest arranging a hand luggage for the cruise. In Halong suitcases are left on the minibus and guarded by the driver.
DAY 5: HALONG BAY – NINH BINH
On board breakfast.
The beautiful cruise continues for the return to Halong. Opportunity of attending a session of Thai Chi on the junk bridge. Brunch on board and disembarkation at 11 am. Meeting with the guide and the driver to continue for Nihn Bihn, better known as “Terrestrial Halong Bay”. Overnight at Emeralda Resort Nihn Bihn Hotel (in Delux room). Dinner in the hotel.
DAY 6: NIHN BIHN – HANOI – HUE
Breakfast in the hotel. In the morning, visit to Hoa Lu, the ancient capital of the emperors of 11th century that houses the temples of the Dinh Dynasty and Le Anteriore. The tour continues to the Trang An caves that offer one of the most gentle and poetic landscapes of Asia in an almost unrealistic scenery. Craggy rock formations emerge from the flat rice fields and open into fantastic caves decorated with incredible stalactites and stalagmites.
You continue to Hanoi airport and flight to Hue recognized World Heritage by UNESCO. Transfer La Residence Hue Hotel (Superior River View).
DAY 7: HUE
Breakfast in the hotel.
Visit of the ancient capital where Nguyen emperors built in 1802 the majestic Citadel with the Forbidden City built according to the dictates of Chinese geometry.
The tour continues with a visit to the Tu Duc Mausoleum and a motor-boat excursion to the Pagoda of the Celestial Lady, Thien Mu Pagoda, on the left bank of the Perfume River.
Enjoy a walk among the market stalls of Dong Ba. Lunch in a restaurant and free dinner.
DAY 8: HUE – DANANG – HOIAN
Breakfast in the hotel.
Departure to Danang where you can visit Cham Art Museum built by French in 1915 to host a precious collection of hindu sculptures come from the sites of the ancient Champa reign (seventh and fifteenth century). Then you climbing up to the Marble Mountain that offers almost surreal views in a succession of pagodas and sacred caves. You continue to Hoi An (16 km from Dining) (UNESCO Heritage). Overnight at Victoria Hoi An Resort & Spa (Garden View Room). Lunch at local restaurant and free dinner.
DAY 9: HOI AN
Breakfast in the hotel.
Hoi An is the guardian of a fascinating variety of temples, pagodas, community houses and above all old houses of rich merchants of furniture, decorations and objects of refined workmanship.
Perhaps the most famous monument is the covered bridge called “Japanese bridge” due to its unique curved shape.
DAY 10: HAI AN – DANANG – NHA TRANG
Breakfast in the hotel. Transfer to the airport of Danang and flight to Nha Trang. Accommodation to Evason Ana Mandara Resort (Deluxe Sea View Room). Free meals.
DAY 11:
Breakfast in the hotel. Free day at your disposal. Free meals.
DAY 12:
Breakfast in the hotel. Free day for relax and beach activities. Free meals.
DAY 13:
Breakfast in the hotel. Free day for relax and beach activities. Free meals.
DAY 14: NHA TRANG – SAIGON
Breakfast in the hotel. Transfer to the airport and flight to Saigon.
Ho Chi Min City (even everyone still call it Saigon) former capital of South Vietnam, is the largest city in the country. Saigon represents something more than the amount of its palaces, streets and unimaginable traffic intrigue of bikes and prostitution rickshaw. It is the city that “lost the war but won peace”. Here are concentrated many of the hopes of those who want to emerge.
Here the attempts to present oneself with another of the “tigers of Asia” are evident, but the contradictions typical of a country with strong underdevelopment and social marginality are equally visible. Above all else is obvious the unrest, excitement, the hangover of activism and individual individualism often with no limits and values in the attempt to recover the lost time due to external interference and the restraints of the maximalist ideology.
Full immersion day with visits to the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Art Nouveau Post building, the War Museum and the crowded Ben Thanh market and the Thien Hua pagoda. Lunch at a local restaurant. Free dinner. Overnight at Caravelle Hotel (Deluxe Room) in the heart of Saigon rebuilt on the rubbles of the 60s hotel that housed the American Broadcating Company. In the evening, it will be pleasant to walk and shop along the Dong Khoi Street, the old French “Rue Catinat” (often referred to “The lover” by Marguerite Duras, born in Saigon or get on the terrace of Rex Hotel. It is located in the center of the city in the Dong Khoi area and is certainly the most famous, but not the best, hotel of the former capital of South Vietnam. US military hierarches and journalists from all over the world stayed here who, from his panoramic terrace with a drink in hand, followed the evolution of the war (at that time, on this same terrace, Tiziano Terzani and Oriana Fallaci argued amiably).
DAY 15: SAIGON – MEKONG DELTA NAVIGATION
Breakfast in the hotel.
Early morning departure by car to the vast region of the mythical Mekong Delta where they live Vietnamese but also Chinese, Khmer and Cham. The Mekong flows for over 4500 kilometers through China, Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and forms the huge delta, whose region was once part of the Khmer domain.
It is exactly for this reason that today part of the Cambodians consider it “Southern Cambodia”.
In the period characterized by the presence of the Red Khmer in power, there was an attempt to annex this area that caused the reaction of recently unified Vietnam. The resulting conflict led to the defeat of the invaders and triggered the definitive eclipse of the Cambodian regime of terror. The resulting conflict led to the defeat of the invaders and triggered the definitive eclipse of the Cambodian regime of terror. Now the delta has become an area with high agricultural productivity that, after the severe crisis due to the collectivization of rural activities followed by the unification of ’75, allows Vietnam to present itself in the world as the second world exporter of rice (as well as being also, a little known, the second coffee producer).
After leaving Saigon and after about three hours, you will reach the river port of Cai Be where at 10 am you will board on the sampan (reserved exclusively for you). The guide leaves you at the port. The sampan goes into the colorful floating market of Cai Be and then proceed towards Vinh Long and Sa Dec going upstream of the river Tien Gian one of the two great arms of the Mekong.
The cruise continues in a small canal where you transfer to a small boat to admire nearby orchards and small villages on the banks.
Later on you will have an interesting stop at a brick factory and you will walk along the narrow streets of San Dec, a charming town where you can still admire old French houses and Chinese temples dating back to the last century.
Not miss a visit to the old house where Ong Huyen Thuy Le, “The lover” of the famous writer Marguerite Duras lived. Back on board and the sampan continues southwards and along a beautiful canal, passing under various “monkey bridges” and skirting typical villages. In some stops, it will be possible to have contacts with the local people and visit a Caodaista temple. Before sunset, we will make our last stop of the day at a beautiful 19th century residence.
We will be welcomed by the owners who have set up for us a candlelight dinner.
An unforgettable experience in a unique atmosphere.
After dinner, the sampan will sail for about an hour to moor in a quiet place not far from Can Tho. Overnight on board of Song Xanh Sampan.
DAY 16: MEKONG DELTA – CAI RANG – CHAU DOC
Breakfast on board.
Around 6 am, the sampan start again the navigation and after an hour, we arrive at the impressive floating market of Cai Rang the largest of the delta.
Between 8.00 and 10.00 am, the activity of the market is very intense with numerous sampan that carry rice, fruit, fish vegetables. The cruise ends at the jetty of your hotel: Victoria Chau Doc Hotel (deluxe room) Lunch at a local restaurant. Dinner in the hotel.
DAY 17: CHAU DOC – PHNOM PEHN VIA FIUME
Breakfast in the hotel. Departure directly from the hotel with a fast boat shared with other tourists. Arrival in Phnom Penh the Cambodian capital in about 4 hours.
After several stops due to the visa procedures not always fast on the Vietnamese side and the Cambodian side (on board there is a person who helps you in procedure), you continue navigation on the Tonle Bassac to the north. The boat is part of the Blue Cruiser Company. Arrived in Phnom Penh, lunch at a restaurant and transfer to La Rose Suites (junior suite room)
After check-in, you must immediately make the visits with the guide to the Royal Palace and the National Museum because they close at 17.00. Dinner in the hotel.
DAY 18: PHNOM PEHN – SIEM REAP
Breakfast in the hotel. We drive to Siem Reap on a good road through country areas full of pulsating daily life. Along the way, we stop at Kompong Kdei to admire an extraordinary Spean Praptos bridge built around 1200 during the reign of Jayavarman II.
It is therefore worth the effort of getting off the car to enjoy the pleasure of walking along the bridge and admiring the sumptuous balustrades in the Naga shape (the sacred serpent). Then descending along the riverbank to examine the interesting structure of the twelve aisles that they are not nothing more than narrow and strongly pointed arches that could thus be easily closed to transform the bridge into a temporary dam.
Arrival in Siem Reap, the nearest location to the Angkor site. Free afternoon. Lunch and dinner at Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor.
DAY 19: SIEM REAP
Breakfast in the hotel.
Angkor, the temple-city that arrived to have a million inhabitants when in London there were fifty thousand. It is now a patrimony of humanity among the most attended by tourists who all year round and from all over the world come to admire the astonishing grandeur of its ruins that themselves would enough to make Indochina the paradise of the artist and the archaeologist. It is an amazing stone that tells the history and myths of the Khmer world, one of the greatest powers of Southeast Asia for over 500 years. The story of Angkor, which in Sanskrit means “capital”, is almost unknown.
It is known that its founder was Yasovarman khmer king who lived about in the year one thousand and that in the two following centuries his descendants embellished and enlarged it, but starting from the fourteenth century the city decays and the mystery gradually recovers it.
In the 16th century, the Portuguese indicated it as an ancient “Roman” city lost in the forest and it is only in 1850 that a French missionary reaches Angkor, denouncing it as a diabolical work a center of idolaters. In fact, the Cambodian and Siamese bonzes had established their convents in the ruins where cremated the eminent deceased of the nation. Angkor was revealed to Europe by the French naturalist Enrico Mouhot who rediscovered it by chance in 1860.
However, for what purpose do we mention dates and chronology? In Angkor, you have to come!
In the morning, we go into the limits of the square of Angkor Thom entering the monumental south gate open in the center of its imposing walls.
At the junction of the diagonals of the fortified quadrilateral stands the Bayon, “Central Mountain” of the temple of temples, the most enigmatic and evocative of all the buildings erected in the late twelfth century by the great Jayavarman VII.
It can be considered as the “baroque” expression of Khmer architecture, but it is very indicative that the more one observes it the more is the strong emotion and its fascination increase. Even the whole composition, which at first moment seems terribly chaotic, acquires a certain sense of order.
One of the most interesting structures of the Bayon is the large bas-relief gallery – currently discovered for the collapse of the gallery – a damask stonewall where, for the first time, scenes taken from the history of the Khmer and depictions of everyday life prevail over Hindu mythology.
Dances, parties, princesses in pirogue on rivers rich in fish, naval battles, marching armies with elephants, chariots and crowds that follow, hermits surprised in solitude, trees and birds, lotus flowers and flags …
Here the art has become madness but at the same temple, the bas-reliefs offer the testimony, evident and rare, of the attention that a king has turned to the joys and sufferings of his people.
When you go through one of the stairs to the second floor of the temple, you have to give up describing the spectacle of the 54 towers on each of which are carved four giant faces representing probably Lokitesvara – the Bodhisattva of Compassion – in whose gaze and enigmatic smile nobody, wherever it approaches, it can escape.
The rains have worn out the features of the huge faces, the eyes seem half-closed or lowered on the smile of the fat and sensual lips.
From the Bayon, we pass to the royal square, surrounded by another architectural landscape, among which the essential reason is the Terrace of the Elephants, a royal tribune built to watch the festivals and parades on which the solitary statue stands that people call “of the leprous King”.
For the apotheosis of the afternoon hours, we keep the visit of the famous Angkor Vat, starting from the East Gate which offers a very suggestive atmosphere and where the tourist flow is small. At the end of the visit, you can admire the main entrance.
Among all the Khmer temples is undoubtedly the undisputed masterpiece of architecture and art of this extraordinary civilization. It measures an outer perimeter of 1800 meters by 1300 and culminate with the refined profile of the five towers-sanctuary that close the horizon. After climbing the steps to the second floor, you will find in front of you the central massif of Angkor Vat surmounted by high intact towers whose center rises its pinnacle sixty-five meters from the plain
In the refined bas-reliefs of one kilometer in length that carpet the galleries, the sculpture touches the stone to describe the great myths of the Mahabarata and Ramayana and among the windows dozens of devata and apsara, seducing celestial nymphs, offer the spectacular testimony of a excellent figurative art. The construction of the temple began in 1120 and ended in 1150 on the death of its creator, the great Suryavarman II; at that time in Italy, the Cathedral of Pisa was consecrated and in Paris it was built Notre Dame. Lunch at a restaurant. Free dinner.
DAY 20: SIAM REAP
Breakfast in the hotel. We will start the visits from Ta Prohm the most exciting of all the Angkorian monuments (we highly recommend to make this visit of great suggestion at 06.30 in the morning without the presence of the tourist flow that usually arrives at about 8.30).
Archaeologists deliberately preferred to leave it almost in the same conditions in which it was discovered. In fact, here the forest is the absolute protagonist. The tree and the liana have nowhere associated with architecture with greater majesty and harmony as in the Ta Prom, monastery Buddhist erected by Jayavarman VII in 1186 and dedicated to his mother.
Crossing the first wall, you witness an unrealistic spectacle: towering trees of Ceiba Pentandra and Ficus Gibbosa wrap with their gigantic roots like enormous tentacles of octopus, low galleries, courtyards and towers where grace and tragedy, violence and tranquility blend.
Tours continue with the wonderful Banteay Srey (the “citadel of women”), a true jewel of Khmer art of 967, straddling the kingdoms of Rajendravarman and Jayavarman V. It stands isolated about 40 km northeast of Angkor and it is undisputed the most delicate and elegant among the architectural testimonies of the site.
The complex consists of three pink sandstone sanctuaries, dedicated to Shiva, entirely covered with fine delicate bas-reliefs. Another feature that makes it unique are the double pediments with their arched shape reminiscent of the torana (entrance doors) of wood of archaic temples.
Not far away, in an isolated village, we will visit the 12th century Banteay Samre temple built during the reign of Suryavarman II. It is a medium-sized sanctuary and as it is almost contemporary to Angkor Wat, it recalls the style and the harmonic proportion of the structures with an exclusive particularity given by ovoid pinnacles, always in gray sandstone, placed along the roofs pinnacles. The temple has been the subject of one of the most accurate and successful restorations using the anastylosis method.
Lunch at restaurant. Dinner barbecue buffet with show of ancient Khmer dance (included in the list of Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNSCO).
Day 21: SIAM REP – BANGKOK – WORLD
Breakfast in the hotel. Departure by car to the Tonle Sap Lake from where, on board a local boat, you reach the village of Kompong Phluk. Tonle Sap is the largest lake in Southeast Asia and in the rainy season, it expands its size by irrigating the fertile rice fields that over the centuries constituted one of the main riches on which the glorious Khmer Empire was founded.
Kompong Phluk is one of the many fishing villages, generally belonging to minority ethnic groups of different origins, who live in wooden houses placed on stilts that reach up to six meters in height, thus allowing the life of the people even when the village is flooded. Late morning return to Siem Reap. Lunch at the hotel. Late check-out at 5 pm.
Transfer to the airport in time for the flight to your Home. Meals and overnight on board.
DAY 22: WORLD
Arrival at your Airport in the morning.
Price per person in double room: From USD 10.000,00
Departures: January – December
THE PRICE INCLUDE:
* Domestic Flight in Economy Class
* Transfers from/to Airports. Domestic transfer by
* Air-conditioned car and minibus
* Accommodation in double room in hotels indicated on travel plan
* Accommodation in GRAN LUX room at Hanoi Melià Hotel
* Accommodation in cabin with bathroom on the junk boat in Halong Bay
* Private Sampam on Delta, sheared Speedboat from Chau Doc to Phnom Penh
* All breakfasts included lunches and dinners as travel plan
* Visits and excursions as indicated in travel plan
* Private speaking Italian guides in both Vietnam and Cambodia
* Letter of invitation for Visa entry in Vietnam
THE PRICE NOT INCLUDE:
* Intercontinental Flights
* Airport Taxes
* Insurance
* All that is not included in “The price includes”
