Good News Travels – Myanmar Forum
Good News Travels – Myanmar Forum
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Good News Travels is the name of the extreme travel company in Yangon but I also must pass on the good news.. having almost finished a four month journey through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, I’ve had time to reflect on the quality of different guides, hotels, sites. Good News Travels was excellent to work with planning the Myanmar tour, provided THE BEST guides, upgrades in all hotels and seamless, slick travelling. If only they could have taken care of the entire four months, life would have been lighter! Kudos to GNT. Very recommend.
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I heard lots of good recommendation about Good News travel in Myanmar yet hardly know about them as a tour operator for Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia
We recently returned from a tour to Myanmar and used William at Good News Travel for our flights and hotel reservations. They are amazing. Very recommend them.
The service was prompt – the communication was excellent – they met us personally on arrival in Yangon – use this company – you cannot go wrong.
Interestingly this was a company recommended to me by a contact in Myanmar. However, despite contacting them twice by email – I am still yet to receive a response!! Booked with Tour Mandalay instead.
Can I ask whether Good News charged a booking fee in addition to the hotel and airline fees? Also did anyone go to Climb on Popa – if so how much is a car from Bagan?
I have used Good News Travels to book our flights and accommodation – we have not travelled yet so can not comment on service on the ground HOWEVER , service to date has been truly good. Sometimes there are delays in replies, however, William has explained that this is due to the unreliable internet connections in Myanmar and the consequential methods for communication inbetween agents and hotels etc.
The best bit is there is no need to send money in advance so no transfer fees (albeit Caxton FX don’t charge).
Very blessed with William’s service at Good News Travels however worth pointing out that on certain elements of a package – notably airport transfers – you will pay considerably more to organise something in advance through GNT that’s just waiting until you arrive at your destination.
We had a pretty elementary itinerary in the end but my guess is that William would be very helpful if you needed to plan a more complicated route too. When his Internet connection was working he always responded very promptly to us. We would undoubtedly recommend him to other Burma travellers.
I ultimately received confirmation of our itinerary for next March from William. The hardest part was coping with an often five week wait inbetween emails which most travellers will find frustrating compared to using similar agents in other S E Asian countries.
I made a duo of switches but William produced exactly what we asked for in the end so I’m very pleased.
I was keen to use his services in particular because he’s blessed to make a large number of reservations and then let you pay on arrival in cash which takes away the extra worry of transferring money to an account in a third party country.
Just got to be patient until March now, can’t wait to get there.
I would certainly agree with the high praise for Good News Travel (William, the holder, and his staff were all excellent). We also spent nine days in Myanmar in November (Yangon, Mandala, Bagan -our dearest stop and Inle Lake). It was just my wifey and I and William arranged for guides/car and driver in all four cities, all airline flights and two of the hotels (I was actually able to get into hotels through Agoda.com that William was not able to – he said that the hotels usually allocate some rooms for the online services like Agoda and he encouraged me to do that if we could get a better hotel – the other advantage is that you can pay via credit card with Agoda). We paid William by transferring money into their Hong Kong bank, which he charged $50 for because of bank fees on his end – I think he actually chooses to take cash but we did not want to carry that in addition to money we needed in-country since we made a duo of stops before Myanmar.
The tour went like clockwork and we did not have one single problem. All the guides we had were good, but two of them are superstars (the guides were free lancers but all of them did a lot of work with Good News) – Than Toe Win in Yangon not only showcased us the glances but truly exposed us to the everyday life of people in Yangon and he was a consummate professional. The other superlative guide was Aung Ngwe in Bagan – not only was he a fantastic guide but he is also an fledgling photographer who guides a lot of photography tours led by professional photographers and he gave us advice on where to take the best photos. And he was right – they are the best pictures I took the entire journey.
One note about communicating with Good News – we had some problems with e-mails and found that skype-ing William worked very well. Internet service in Myanmar can be buggy and skype is a good backup. It also took about two months from begin to final confirmation of everything (some of that obviously is our fault), so I would certainly advise early planning. The gates are open in Myanmar and there are not that many hotels yet, especially in Yangon.
Whatever the hassles are in planning the tour, it’s all worth it – beautiful country, spectacular glances and (as someone else noted) the people are the nicest/friendliest I think we have ever encountered. And albeit we walked through all types of neighborhoods during the day and night, there was never a moment when we felt anything but welcome and safe. I would go back in a minute, especially to Bagan.
Edited: Four:52 pm, December 07, two thousand twelve
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We just returned from a twelve day excursion in Myanmar, in the highest tourist season of the country, and William made this possible in a very brief time.
We determined to travel just two months before, and due to the tourist boom in Myanmar was very difficult to book hotels, flights and tours.
I contacted several travel agents in Myanmar, and the only one that gave me a concrete and realistic reaction was William. Due to the internet difficulties, it was better to call than to write emails, and in the end, William delivered all he promised. When we arrived in Yangon, we went to his office and paid in USD, so we saved high credit card commissions.
Very very recommended!
My wifey and I have just returned from a three week tour to southeast Asia. We had a fantastic time. We cannot thank TripAdvisor enough for the postings recommending William Myatwunna of Good News Travels (GNT) in Yangon. Thanks to William, our 10-day visit to Myanmar far exceeded our high expectations.
Commencing with tour planning, William learned about us, our needs, and priorities and then made outstanding itinerary recommendations. He patiently answered all our questions and graciously accommodated several requested switches. The cost he quoted clearly represented good value.
In the end, we spent just the right amount of time in Yangon, Bagan, Mandalay, and Inle Lake. The things we witnessed and experienced were fascinating. Each booked hotel/ resort was superb, truly five starlet in location, accommodations, food, and service. The air-conditioned cars were modern and clean and the drivers were terrific.
We had read online and heard about the high quality of GNT’s guides, a vital excursion success factor. Our guide, who stayed with us from beginning to end, is a truly delightful person, enormously knowledgeable about his country and anxious to share it. His English is ideal and he has a fine sense of humor.
Our guide “wowed” us at every turn. Whether it was presenting us with unexpected welcome gifts, buying flowers for us to present at our “day of the week” corner at Shwedagon Pagoda, helping us find just the right souvenirs or navigate restaurant menus, taking us to the ideal place to take photos of Shwedagon at night or in flawless morning light, or arranging an amazing sunset on the Irrawaddy (!), he spared no effort to ensure we would have a excellent time.
One utterly valuable benefit of GNT is that they have offices and staff in each of the major tourist cities. This is helpful in matters like airport logistics but even more so in emergencies. My wifey suffered food poisoning and collapsed in a Bagan restaurant. Another diner – a German doctor – rendered instant assistance but our guide, through his local manager, quickly arranged for a local doctor to go after us back to the hotel and examine her more accurately. Fortunately, she recovered quickly, but we were most grateful for our guide’s care and response.
Looking back now and reveling hundreds of amazing photos, our guide not only displayed us wonderful glances but he collective his country with us in an intimate way and exposed us to everyday life there. We met memorable people like KaiKai, a fifteen year old selling trinkets on the beach at Bagan and a chief monk who began a program to help disadvantaged children succeed in school. We met a waiter who saves every penny to pay $200 for another term of college and who reads “two candles” worth of English every night. We spotted people arriving in longboats to buy the necessities of everyday life at the five day market in Inle Lake. We observed numerous handicrafts being made, from silk to boats, cheroots to bark paper, lacquer to woodcarving.
We were most fortunate to have the guide chosen for us. By the end of the excursion, he was truly a friend. But in talking to him about his colleagues, meeting some of them along the way, and reading feedback on TripAdvisor, I am certain we would have had a good tour with any of them. That’s because the treatment and values we experienced are at the heart of William Myatwunna’s business philosophy and commitment to his clients.
We urge you strongly to visit this amazing country, especially now, in this time of transformation. Let Good News Travels help plan your trip—you won’t be disappointed! Due to infrastructure limitations, six months advance planning is desirable.
