Hanoi Kids Club - a great experience

---

When Lorenza and I were researching and preparing our rough plans to visit Hanoi we came across an organization called Hanoi Kids Club. They were offering free tours of various areas of Hanoi in exchange for English conversation.

I read some reports and reviews of their service on sites such as Trip Advisor and decided to contact them. We made contact with the club via their website and confirmed a day and time for our tour. We had some specific places that we were interested in visiting and the tour organiser was happy to oblige.

We had to cancel our original tour date via the phone as we had fallen ill and rescheduled it for the following day. I called the phone contact I had been given and found I was talking to a young lady who spoke very good English and was only too happy to help us reschedule our tour.

On the day we spent with them our guides were two very nice young gentlemen, Tai and Quang. We were also joined by another tourist on the suggestion of the boys, so that we could share the taxi costs and make the day even cheaper for all of us.

Tai met us at 9am at our hotel and we then spent the full day in company with him and Quang. They knew their stuff about Hanoi as all their members have to do some training in order to conduct the tours. We found that their level of English was very good and we really enjoyed conversing with them and swapping information about life in Australia compared to that of a student in Hanoi.

The suggestion made by our guides for another tourist to join us and share the costs was a great idea. We travelled to all the sites via taxi and shared the fare costs. It also meant we met yet another person who was very happy with the services of Hanoi Kids Club. Verena, our fellow tourist had already spent the previous day seeing some sites with Quang and had been looking forward to spending another day with him as her guide.

I cannot recommend their services highly enough, they acted in a very professional manner, showed us some sights we would never have seen if they were not locals. We paid for their lunch and at the end of the day offered them both a tip, which they said they could not accept, we insisted and they said the small amount would be put into a group fund by the club.

I you want more information or would like to contact the Hanoi Kids Club you can find their website here.

Also, I noticed that they have a facebook page .... Hanoi Kids Club on Facebook

(7/6/2010 - PS: I fixed the link above to the website as it had changed domain name.)

---

Photos

Hanoi Kids Club
not every offer that sounds to good to be true is a scam