Tour Itineraries

This tour offers an unusual and unforgettable insight into the everyday lives of the minority ethnic culture of the Akha tribe. The community we visit will genuinely welcome you as a special guest while they proudly present to you aspects of their traditions and beliefs. This will truly be an experience of a lifetime as you home stay with the community and become part of their family.

This initiative is being supported by the Thailand Community Based Tourism Institute (CBT-I) www.cbt-i.org

 This program gives guests a unique opportunity to appreciate the beauty of the Karen Hill Tribe life, spent in harmony with nature on “Doi Inthanon”, the ‘Roof of Thailand’ and our countries’ highest mountain. Guests stay in a simple village lodge, built by a group of community members. Local guides lead guests to explore local culture and crafts in the village as well as enjoying a short trek to a neigbouring village. On route, guests enjoy fresh air and beautiful scenery. Your guide will share traditional Karen legends about the intimate relationships between people and forest which help to protect the environment. In the morning, guests can enjoy a delicious cup of hot, fresh, Arabica mountain coffee.

 This initiative is being supported by the Thailand Community Based Tourism Institute (CBT-I) www.cbt-i.org

  In this program you will learn about the wealth of nature and culture in lower Northern Thailand. Enjoy visiting an area which is stunningly beautiful, natural, friendly and still off the beaten path for most guests to Thailand.

 This initiative is being supported by the Thailand Community Based Tourism Institute (CBT-I) www.cbt-i.org

This program provides a fun opportunity to exchange knowledge and understanding between visitors and the local community, and promotes local cultures and the environment.Guests can share and join in many aspects of local life. Welcoming guests encourages and empowers the communities and promotes an awareness of the need to live in harmony with each other and nature. Profits are used in community development activities for the village. The villagers benefit by earning an alternative income through providing accommodation, meals, and handicrafts and by taking on the roles of guides and local experts.

This initiative is being supported by the Thailand Community Based Tourism Institute (CBT-I) www.cbt-i.org

Open your childrens' eyes and minds to life away from home, and outside the classroom!

The Family Journey to Mae Kampong shares local life, culture and nature, with guests. Activities have been crafted for active families hoping for a fun, learning experience of life in a different culture. Thai people love to meet families, so you will enjoy an especially warm welcome.

This trip is an amazing opportunity for your family to spend time together in a local village, meet local people, join your host family picking tea, cooking or working together to make a local craft. Guests experience a mixture of culture, nature, interaction and time to relax.

 The people of Mae Kampong work in a group to manage tourism, building local skills and confidence. Income from the CBT program is distributed broadly throughout the community and provides tangible benefits to local community members and to the environment.

 This initiative is being supported by the Thailand Community Based Tourism Institute (CBT-I) www.cbt-i.org

This tour offers an unusual and unforgettable insight into the everyday lives of the minority ethnic culture of the Akha tribe. The community we visit will genuinely welcome you as a special guest while they proudly present to you aspects of their traditions and beliefs. This will truly be an experience of a lifetime as you home stay with the community and become part of their family.

This initiative is being supported by the Thailand Community Based Tourism Institute (CBT-I) www.cbt-i.org

This program gives an opportunity to explore Prome Loke and the mountains of the Khao Luang watershed area. Guests can stroll along the local nature trail, visit a waterfall, and enjoy a warm welcome and cultural exchange with local Southern Thai hosts.

This initiative is being supported by the Thailand Community Based Tourism Institute (CBT-I) www.cbt-i.org

This program invites guests to experience original Thai island life, as it used to be before the arrival of industrial fishing and mass tourism. Guests stay in local homes with friendly families. Fish with your host family, visit the island’s rubber plantations, have a go farming rice in the planting or harvesting seaons, visit a local market or school, and enjoy delicious fresh seafood. The people of Koh Yao Noi are well known in Thailand for their passion for conservation, which earned them the 2002 World Legacy Award from National Geographic Traveler and Conservation International. Guests can also listen to their inspiring and herioc true stories.Even though some hotels have been built on the Island, Koh Yao Noi is still free from mass-tourism. The island also remains free from criminality. It’s a pure environment, which shows us that living in harmony with nature instead of just using it is possible.

  This initiative is being supported by the Thailand Community Based Tourism Institute (CBT-I)  www.cbt-i.org

This program was designed for travelers who are fond of exploring nature and local culture in simple, natural ways. You will have a unique opportunity to touch and learn the way of life of Southern Thai people in Leeled & Klong Noi Villages. Local guides lead you on an exploration of the mangroves and rivers which make this area green and beautiful. You will also have the chance to meet local craftspeople, and try your hand making local crafts. Leeled won the Thai Tourism Award for an excellent ecotourism destination. Klong Noi is also a serene place to visit, full of orchards and cool waterways. This program is a great combination of nature and culture.

 This initiative is being supported by the Thailand Community Based Tourism Institute (CBT-I) www.cbt-i.org

Our boat takes you down the Bangkok Noi canal where we visit the royal processional barges and observe canal-side life. On the way back we visit Wat Arun and, if time, the fresh flower market.

The famous temple of the people, Wat Pho, is our destination where we pay respects to the huge reclining Buddha image and relieve our muscle pains by experiencing a traditional Thai massage.

We learn about Thailand’s culture and history at the national museum followed by a tram ride around the historic area, built over 200 years ago as a replica of the former capital in Ayutthaya.

A knowledgeable guide takes us into the Grand Palace followed by a tram ride around the historic area, built over 200 years ago as a replica of the former capital in Ayutthaya, 80 kms to the north.

Two “must-see” sights of Bangkok are explored in the morning. After an “away from tourists” lunch of authentic Thai food with a river setting, the afternoon includes a visit to a slum community craft project followed by a more leisurely sojourn in a charming old wooden palace. Suitable for first-time visitors to Thailand, you will be shown around by a knowledgeable and entertaining Thai guide.

Venturing out of the city for a day, we get to meet Thai people in their homes and communities and watch them working at their crafts, perhaps even having a try ourselves. These artisans provide a human link to a glorious past amply evidenced from the ancient ruins, now preserved, of Ayutthaya as the Siamese royal capital.

To see all aspects of Thai life in one day is clearly impossible but this tour at least gives us a glimpse and broadens our understanding of an age-old civilization based on rural traditions. Modernization threatens to overrun the old ways but, if you look behind today’s facade, the beauty of the past is hidden not so far away. We visit a floating market, Thai houses, a palace, some temples, and get to take a boat ride and ceramic painting and an ethnic minority village with weavers and basket makers.

Chiang Mai is more than just a city. It is Thailand’s second largest province, with a wide variety of landscapes from high mountains to wide valleys, and is home to people of many cultures, including several ethnic minorities, known locally as hilltribes. This tour offers an overview of this beautiful and interesting province, and we meet artisans of different hand-weaving and embroidery styles in their villages, and later visit one of the foremost textile experts in the country. If weaving is your hobby, there is the opportunity to obtain useful materials. However, the interested observer will also find the different techniques and styles fascinating to study. But it’s not all weaving. Many “must see” sites and “must do” activities of this former centre of the ancient Lanna culture are not missed.

If less well-known and prestigious than Chiang Mai, the northern-most province of Chiang Rai is no less attractive in terms of beauty and charm, boasting a wide variety of art and culture among both its lowland and upland peoples. This tour will remind us of (in our visit to a spectacular museum), but does not dwell on, the opium reputation of the so-called Golden Triangle (where Thailand, Burma and Laos meet). Instead, we turn to what has replaced it and how art and craft play an important part in today’s way of life. Religion also has a significant role and we visit a new Buddhist temple that complements the old. We see lowlanders making paper and pottery, recently influenced by other cultures. We visit hilltribes that adapt their traditional craft to satisfy the tastes of modern markets and migrants from the Northeast who maintain their original skills in silk production. Finally, we can applaud the future prospects of highland communities weaned off opium-growing and now practicing new high-value skills with the help of a Royal sponsored project.

While millions of tourists flock to the holiday beach resorts on both coasts of Thailand’s southern peninsula each year, hardly any of them gets to see the real Southern way of life, meet the genuine local people or experience the wild beauty of the tropical-forested mountains that make up the interior. On this tour, we do all this. We visit the craftspeople that make and perform traditional shadow puppets, weave baskets from rushes, mould clay into traditional container shapes, tie-dye using plants and weave cotton the southern Thai way. On the way, we visit ancient temples, peruse past art and craft at museums, spend one day and one night with a high mountain valley community, and end up on the west coast, in a fishing village community where we will take a boat trip to a nearby islet to learn more about the fragile ecology of this beautiful coastline.

The Northeast of Thailand (Isarn) is not often visited by tourists. Yet, by way of interest and culture, it offers just as much or even more than other parts of this kingdom. Its rural village communities of different ethnic origins have blended to create a distinct “Isarn” culture of its own, which, mainly because of migration, has influenced Thai life nationwide. This fascinating, unhurried tour, befittin Isarn’s easy pace of life, visits the southern part of this region where ancient Khmer culture is still visible, both in edifices of the past and in the traditions and crafts of the people themselves.

Though a largely flat landscape, Thailand’s Northeast Region, known locally as “Isarn”, has its own beauty and is full of cultural and historical interest. In the way of crafts, there are many complex fabric weaving processes to be discovered, some using natural dye techniques, and more. The comfortable overnight sleeper train takes us to the busy centre of Khon Kean where we meet a women’s group enterprise focused on traditional weaving in 5 communities. They show us their city store and take us to see different natural dye and handloom techniques for cotton and silk in some of the villages. The following day takes us to basket weavers as well as a visit to Ban Chiang, a UNESCO world heritage site, displaying earthen-ware pots that are 4,000 to 7,500 years old. The final day is spent in the attractive town of Nong Khai, on the banks of the Mekhong River, where we visit Catholic sisters whose job creation programme for young women is an inspiration. We visit some old temples and capture the ambiance of the old town before taking the night sleeper back to Bangkok.

Come with us to the North of Thailand, where we will visit an area not frequented much by travellers. Here in Nan, you can experience a flavour of the past, as traditions here are still strong. Ethnic minorities dominate the craft scene both in the lowlands and in the highlands where colourful embroidery and appliqué of the Hmong and Mien women are as skillfully worked as they are varied in design. After one night in a national park resthouse high in the hills, we visit villages nestled in mountain valleys, where basket makers will show us the versatility of bamboo and we will see a very different style of silver jewellery being crafted – which, as part of their tribal costumes, has important symbolic purpose for ethnic identity.

While Chiang Mai and much of the North is, quite justifiably, a tourist trap, it is still possible to savour much of its heritage without necessarily visiting those places described in every published guidebook. This tour travels to villages tourists seldom reach, visits interesting and beautiful
Buddhist temples that are less well-known and spends time at an elephant camp that is primarily a preservation project rather than a tourist attraction – though that doesn’t prevent these amazing animals from putting on quite a show!

Southern Thailand’s largest island, Phuket, and the Western mainland coast exposed to the
Andaman Sea has become a world-famous holiday destination for millions of visitors each year. But can the fragile environment withstand this human onslaught? Nature demonstrated its ultimate fury in the devastating tsunami of 2004 and the slow process of recovery and reconciliation with the elements will continue for a long time yet. On this unusual tour in a popular tourist area, we get up close to the wonders of nature’s awesome beauty by canoe and then meet with some of the survivors in communities which bore the brunt and lost the most from the devastating 2004 tsunami.