Group Budget Tours in the Mekong Region

About Budget Mekong Tours (BMT)
Established 20 years ago as a tour operator of the Southeast Asian countries, we have focussed on the Mekong region countries since four years ago when travels in the Mekong region came into vogue. We have now created several Master Tours covering five Mekong region countries for young and intrepid world travellers interested in Southeast Asia on a low budget. We endeavour to become among the top operators of budget tours as quickly as possible since we are located right in the centre of the Mekong region with easy overland access to Kyaing Tong (the eastern Shan State of Myanmar), Yunnan (south China), Luang Prabang (northern Laos) and Siem Reap-Angkor (Cambodia) and across the border to Vietnam - and vice versa. Our main office is Mekong Treks Co., Ltd. in Chiang Rai (Thailand). We have an office in Siem Reap, Mekong Treks (Cambodia); to be followed by Mekong Treks (Laos) in Luang Prabang; Mekong Treks (Vietnam) in Ho Chi Minh City; and Mekong Treks (Myanmar) in Yangon. Under the Mekong Treks umbrella we have spread our operation to cater for travellers on a low budget by establishing Budget Mekong Tour (BMT).

Our Aim
We want people to travel on as low a budget as we can make it for them. These budget tours are value for money. Our motto is "Price Does Matter to our Travellers" but does not matter to us and we endeavour to maintain the lowest prices for our clients while still delivering an appropriately high quality product.

Demographic Information
Budget Mekong Tour (BMT) travellers are young in age and at heart, money conscious, enthusiastic individuals who fall between the ages of 18 and 80, or thereabouts - what's the difference between a decade or two? They are looking for backpacker-style of travel, without the hardships of backpacking, at a cheap price. They are easy-going with a great attitude and tolerance of local cultures and ways of doing things, not seeking to impose a foreign mould on a local module, and willing to take things in their stride. Our clients are made up of a mixture of nationalities - American, Australian, British, Canadian, and New Zealander clients, although we have bookings from a number of European countries as well as South Africa and Asia.

Groups and Departures
An average group size is between 6 and 16 clients, however this may rise to as many as 25 during more popular periods and for enticing destinations. The departure dates are fixed in the schedule for the Master Tours and broken down into sub-tours which travellers can pick and choose to have a continuous travel in the Mekong countries of their choice. If BMT failed to get the minimum number of travellers, we would have to cancel the departure, or operate it under minimum number. If we have to cancel, we will offer you an alternative tour for your consideration.

Itineraries
BMT operates three Master Tours covering the Mekong region countries of Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and including the two Southeast Asian countries of Malaysia and Singapore. We will be adding Yunnan to the repertoire soon. Within them are 11 sub-tours for travellers to pick and choose. A complete date schedule helps clients to choose which particular package they want at which period and number of days.

Master Tour One
- Four Countries Crossing , 32 days/31 nights
Sub-tours
- Yangon to Chiang Mai, 14 days/13 nights
- Chiang Mai via Kanchanaburi (River Kwai) to Bangkok, 9 days/8 nights
- Bangkok via Malaysia to Singapore, 12 days/11 nights.

Master Tour Two
- Highlight of Indochina & Mekong Regin, 40 days/39 nights
Sub-tours
- Hanoi to Saigon, 13 days/12 nights
- Saigon via Cambodia to Bangkok, 8 days/7 nights
- Bangkok via Kanchanaburi (River Kwai) to Chiang Mai, 9 days/8 nights
- Chiang Mai via Laos to Bangkok, 13 days/12 nights.

Master Tour Three
- Southeast Asia Adventure Trips, 46 days/ 45 nights
Sub-tours
- Singapore via Malaysia to Bangkok, 13 days/12 nights
- Bangkok via Laos to Bangkok, 15 days/ 14 nights
- Bangkok via Cambodia to Saigon, 8 days/7 nights
- Saigon to Hanoi, 13 days/12 nights

Pricing
The pricing of Budget Mekong Tour is one composite cost with no hidden costs anywhere along the way. We don't put on you the inconvenience of collecting a "Local Fund" upon your arrival in the first destination after the initial tour cost has been paid by you. This lessens the amount of money you carry in your travels and removes an irksome exercise for you.

Payment
You pay a non-refundable but transferable deposit of 20% of the tour cost when you make a booking. Upon confirmation of the package from BMT by e-mail to you, you will be asked to pay the rest of the tour cost. Usually, payment by SWIFT funds transfer from your bank into our bank account is completed 30 days before the date of travel begins. We can suggest other ways to make payment following individual requirement - like through PayPal, Moneybookers and credit cards.

The Tour Cost & Its Inclusions
The full tour cost is paid to Budget Mekong Tour either at the main or branch offices. This tour cost includes all we stated in the itineraries - budget accommodation in budget hotels and guesthouses; a mixture of private and public transport included in the itinerary, inclusive of fuel, road tolls, boats, trains, minivans, jeeps, tuk-tuks and other means of transportation to travel from place to place; services of Tour Leaders in each country acting as your informant and sometimes driver. To save you cost, we will have local Tour Leaders travelling with you in their own country and from border to border. Rarely will you travel without a Tour Leader - and that might only be on a point-to-point train journey. At international borders we will have the Tour Leader take you across the border to help you with immigration formalities and meet personally the waiting local Tour Leader to hand the group over. We don't saddle you with a single Tour Leader taking you through all the 5 countries of the Mekong region as this would be presumptuous that a single person knows as much about each country as a local Tour Leader about his own country. By having local Tour Leaders to take care of you means that all of them speak the local language instead of just English. To give you the best information and expertise from local experts BMT provides local Tour Leaders in each of the country you travel through. This saves you cost because you don't need to pay for the Tour Leaders' expenses in crossing borders. Where we include a tour for you we will have a local guide to conduct this tour in keeping with prevailing tourism regualation in that country.

Tour Leaders-Guides
In different localities and countries we have various personnel acting in the capacity of a Tour Leader to escort the group and take care of them from city to city and border to border throughout the entire master itinerary. These T/L-guides will be able to communicate with the group in reasonably good English at least. Accents might sound strange at first to Western ears for these are Asians speaking a foreign though universal language. But your ears will attune to these accents speedily. Your kind understanding and acceptance of their manner of speech is solicited. They will be responsible for checking the group into and out of hotels, providing local information and assistance when required by you, for arranging optional tours on demand for you, accompanying the group to optional sites, organising and accompanying group members for evening meals and overseeing the smooth running of the tour, including babying you if you fell ill or just out of sorts. They will be with you much of the time and have a mobile number for you to call them at other times. They will be able to provide information and advice on optional tours as outlined in the Mekong region itineraries, and respond to your needs for any travel assistance. As a gesture of appreciation for good work rendered clients might want to tip them and give other gratuities like a dinner or a drink. These will be totally at the client's discretion. At no time will they be so undignified as to solicit money or favours from the travellers in their charge. Their main preoccupation is to be at your service, not to get anything from you.

Uniform
The Tour Leaders will wear Budget Mekong Tour's branded T-shirts on the first day of the tour to identify themselves to the group and to other tour leaders to whom they would be handing the group to along the trail.

Transport
This will be a combination of privately hired and public transport. Where it is expedient and available, and to avoid discomfort or inconvenience, we will convey the group in privately chartered, air-conditioned vehicles. In places where public transport is convenient we use it, to lessen the package cost for you. Public transport can consist of local buses, long-distance overnight luxury coaches, taxis, vans, tuk-tuks, motorized boats big and small, trains and the like. We seek out the cleanest and safest means of transport for you but regrettably have no control over the drivers. But where drivers are notoriously reckless we abstain using such public transport and use our own.

Entrance Fees
As you won't be saddled with many pre-paid tours, all clients will pay for the site guides and transport of any optional tours they choose to do in each place. Clients will pay for all their own entrance fees of any sightseeing they wish to engage in with the hired guide and transport. Your Tour Leader will give you information as to the programmes and approximate costs of the optional tours in each city and place you visit. At times he himself will conduct you on such optional tours in chartered transport if you wanted it.

Hotels
Although we have specified 2-star hotels and good guesthouses, we will provide 3-star hotels that offer a competitive rate if available. All hotels and guesthouses we use will be of a reasonable standard without frills as befitting a budget accommodation - clean with private bathroom attached in all the hotels we use, hot & cold water shower and air-conditioned. They are safe and in a good location, usually in downtown or city centre, never outside of town. The guesthouses we use are small family-owned lodgings that are charming in ambience and comfortable in furnishings. We will provide breakfast with the room wherever we can get the co-operation of the hotel to give us complimentary breakfasts which could be continental, American set, Asian or buffet style depending on the season. But in your package tours no meals are included as a norm.

Rooming
We provide a Twin room for two persons of the same sex to share if there is no special request to us. Any two persons can share a room on request to us. In the case of three males or three females in the group wanting to room together we provide a Triple room with three separate beds in the room, if available at the hotel. The budget hotels we are using understandably have small rooms and space would be a bit cramped with three single beds in the room. Some budget hotels and guesthouses cannot cater for three beds in a room. For a single person whether by choice or circumstance whom we could not fit into a Triple room, a Single Supplement of half the cost of a Twin room is payable by that person to enjoy staying in a Single room. How much this room Single Supplement is will be informed to the client at the close of the booking exercise for the group - 30 days before the commencement of travel at least.

Meals
No meals are included on the tour unless breakfast is offered on a complimentary basis by the hotels. Therefore the clients are responsible for paying for all their meals. The National Tour Leader-guide will suggest a suitable restaurant for the group and take the group there joining in the camaraderie. This is purely voluntary and if group members do not wish to accompany the Tour Leader in any evening's activity they are under no obligation to do so but can go where they wish.

Marketing
Our main channel for selling these budget tours will be our current website www.budgetmekongtour.com
In conjunction with these we will be promoting our new destinations via a media advertising campaign, Google website, Yahoo website, press release, brochure launch party and associated websites, one of which is www.mekongtreks.com  Enquiries or bookings by email can be sent to mekongtours@mekongtreks.co or budget_mekong@hotmail.com

Our phone numbers are 66-53-601052, 66-53-601053, 66-2-2675135, 66-2-2675136. Our fax numbers are 66-53-601055 and 66-2-2672187.