Tips to get the best free tour guides for your Vietnam holiday

As you can see, in the case of Kimmy - a canadian girl who traveled to Vietnam, as soon as I posted a topic, there were quite a number of young students who are more than eager to help Kimmy, as well as to help you.

• Topic: A Canadian girl and an american boy needs help while travelling in...
• Blog: One American backpacker who experienced us wrote a blog to tell a s...

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Most Vietnamese are good, especially people who are in this website, they are here with pure purpose to learn something. However, just in case, there are a little percentage of risk, there are still some street traders who are under cover and may disguise to mix in our volunteer group to do  their 'own business' (making money from you). So as mentioned, most people are good, but still, please be careful.

 

There are now quite many, and you -in fact- don't need all of them, although with list of all contacts , please do keep for any at any time you need. It's harmless to give a call.

 

 

The main questions for you - as a traveller- to ask the tour guides are:

1. - English: Can I communicate with you?
2. - Knowledge:  Do you know very well the area that I need to visit?
3. - Availability:  Do you have time to help me in those days?
4. - Non-profit: Are you really free?
5. - Personality: Do you look like someone I will have fun with?
6. - Reliability:

• Do you have hidden plans to make money from me?

• Or are you honest but you yourself are unknowingly being used by some people to scam me? (Looking into people's eyes will help , your common-sense logic will help a lot) -

• If they say they are from a different group or different organisation (rather than this hoctienganh.com.au), it means they have a hidden plan, they may be the creepy and sneaky people with disguised hidden agenda on you, try to sell you some tour, scam you into some dodgy hotel, or trick you into some fishy booking service.

• Another tip for you is: on website such as lonelyplanet, if you see people with many thousands of post, it means they sit all day posting on such forums - they must be sales people selling tours, you got to think twice before you can trust them or their comments.

• Do you look like the picture you put on this website? (From 2012 Sep 05 , we will ask all members of this website to upload their real photos: if they look different people, or these people may be scammers: if not, why do they put on photos that are different from themselves?)

     7. Vehicle: How  do we travel together? (Keep in mind that most of these students in Vietnam don't drive cars, often they ride scooters)

 

     8. Priority: Out of my very good options, are you my Best options?

 

 

There are few tips for you filter the best options. 

 

• Firstly , start with group A (group A = the contacts previously i provided" those who we ourselves worked most closely with and somehow trust that they won't disappoint you (as well as our community reputation).

• Secondly, from these reliable contacts , find out group B (friends of A, whose A know well and feel reliable - confirm, ask A: do you really know B, for how long?)

• With phone numbers you have, give them a call first if you can, talk to them before you meet, if they can answer you on the phone, they speak proper English, you can prefer them. If they can't speak English, then they won't be good tour guide, even if they are free, you will have a difficult time.( And remember , even with a good English speaker, get a pen and paper , you may need it later to make your communications clear!)

• The best thing is arrange a meeting with a number of them first in a cafe ( you pay your own coffee , they pay theirs, if you ride their scooters, you can offer to pay for gasoline, which is often $3 for the whole day), have a chat about what you want, ask questions, understand what they can do, and let them understand you too (Noone can help you unless they understand what you need). After all, get your list of contacts , go back to your hotel, have a good consideration to finalize who you will call.

• Note: The rule for all people who want to be free tour guides in this website is:"No one is not supposed to make money or get paid" (Unless you 2 have a specific discussion and or you previously  offer to share cost on scooter fuel, or any possible agreed mutual meals).  At any time if you sense anyone who seems suggesting or demanding money: it's time to be decisive and just walk away without good bye, move on to give another person in the list a chance to be a free tour guide .

• Once you have bad experience , please send us an email, or you can write a blog here, sharing your story of good and bad experience will also help the next travellers to Vietnam to reduce risk and increase their chances of having the best journey. After the trip, it is very nice of your to write a blog or story about your experience with us here. Good and Bad are all fine, we all appreciate it.

As we want you to be safe, to be honest, travelling in Asia is quite an adventure (even to myself as an Asian, who spent 17 years in Vietnam and traveled few times to Thailand and Malaysia , where I myself got scammed by Bankok tuktuk as was as Malaysian taxi drivers - I got cheated every single time i was there). There are hundreds of millions of people in unregulated Asia , good people and bad people in a mess mixed up, so your job is to figure out, it's our own vision to blame, to see good people as good people instead of seeing good people as bad people, as well as NOT to see bad people as good people.

 

Once again:  We DON'T want you to be scammed, even for 1 dollar.

Watch out street traders, 'xe om', and be careful that good people can also make honest mistakes (when fishy/dodgy traders will cheat you through some 100% innocent but naive good people you know too) .

We want everyone arrives in Vietnam will have their best time, however we are not living in the best-organised country in the world, and some times  'bad apple' scammed you guys and make us all look bad, we want to do our best to help you and help our motherland to show up as it really is: a beautiful nation of hard workers with honest hearts.

• As said above, Group A are recommended people, who we ourselves have been somewhat familiar or had good experience with and put our trust on them.

All we want is when you leave Vietnam,

you leave it with a wonderful impression. That is all what we want!

When coming back you can optionally log on to http://www.redcross.org.au/vietnam.aspx Red Cross Vietnam and donate any amount as you wish to help the 

Any feedback please send me an email,

Thanks for having read.

Vietnamese people are great. Enjoy your holiday!

 

Welcome to Free Tour Guide in Vietnam (For Tourists)

Hi guys, thank you for having been to this website, I'm sure you must be here because of the Advertising I put on Google, or Facebook.

Ok, let me explain a bit more for you. Here we are , a community of 8000 members in Vietnam

1. Why it is good for me?

Here we have a community of Vietnamese youngsters, they are living in many different cities in Vietnam , and they are enthusiastic to welcome you, and take you a trip around their cities, or many of the destinations in your plan as you can specifically request .

A lot of volunteers for you to choose . More than 8000 of them, as you can see:

http://hoctienganh.ning.com/profiles/members/

And this is FREE.

2. Why do these people want to be volunteers? 

OK, these Vietnamese people, like most youngsters, are optimistic, enthusiastic and very willing to help anyone from anywhere in the world.

There is also an importance why they want to help you is, they want to learn your language, they want to practice their English, being able to have a conversation with you make them happy and improve their English.

3. Why you can trust them?

Firstly, most Vietnamese people are good, like most places in the world, there is also a small percentage of 'bad apple' that spoils the barrel. However, this is what we do to maximize your safety and minimize the risk for you (at the same time , this is also the way we protect our good members)

Ok, to be approved to be in this list, I make sure our members submit their photo ID, such as their Citizen ID.

Plus, the peopled in the found list will have to deposit an amount of bond which is only refunded after you - the tourists, are back to your own countries and confirmed with us that your trip has been fine.

4. How do you start?

There is no rocket science here, all you need to do is simple.

Firstly, start with sending me your email with a scan copy of your passport (of course, we want to keep our members safe too).My email is 

Secondly, you simple need to post, for example:

• "Hi, my name is Mary, I'm from England, I will travel to Vietnam during February, I will travel around Hanoi at the end of February. I'm looking for some tour guides in Hanoi  to help me"

Just as simple as that , there will be people who give you answer, and you can choose one , two, or all of them. They will speak local language, they will be your translator, have fun with you, tell you stories about the city they live.

If you have any more questions, please don't hesitate to ask me by sending emails , or right here. As the founder of this social network, I will assist you with your questions, and options.