NatGeo was amazing. Our guides were fantastic. Jessica was our main/primary guide and she stayed with us the entire time. She didn't try to dominate the tour, she let the local guides lead in the various countries but was knowledgeable enough of the different countries that if we had questions we could ask her while the local guides continued giving the discussions. Before the trip started we had a trip coordinator that handled all of our questions so we always had the same person to deal with, not like
ABD where you deal with whoever answers the phone. One of the big pluses was that we booked our trip a year in advance and they told us outright not to book any airfare until THEY told us to. They wait until the trip is guaranteed to go before they give the go ahead for everyone to book their airfare. The minimum number for our trip was 8 but we got the go ahead to book at 10 people. We also like the fact that we were doing something every day so we really got our money's worth.
The guides also did a good job of reading the group and knowing when it was time to move the group on or moving the conversation on. NatGeo doesn't use two of their own guides (American lead guide supplemented by another so called local guide) supplemented by other local guides. For our trip, Jessica is from Malaysian Borneo but who spent years living in Ha Noi and then we had 3 local guides, one from Vietnam, one for Lao and one from Cambodia, each from their tourism boards, each licensed to lead in their respective countries.
Jessica spoke Vietnamese, some Lao and some Cambodian, which came in handy when it came time to shop or go to dinner because she could write down the street address for the taxis in the local language. Also she gave amazing dinner recommendations, unlike on our ABD in Central Europe where the dinner recommendations consisted of the local McDonalds or the local supermarket. Jessica actually recommended local places based on your preference, so for us, she recommended the Know One, Teach One called Pots and Pans. She even made us the reservation.
Before we left Cambodia, Jessica let us know that we could contact her at any time after we got home for information on South East Asia because the area "was her playground" (those are her words, not mine). She has given us in-country tour operators that will custom make us a trip to Vietnam as we plan to return to the country in 2019.
Any issues we had on the trip were more issues with our tour companions and not with NatGeo so we will definitely travel with NatGeo again. We found that NatGeo has the customer service that we would expect a company like ABD to have but is sadly lacking there these days. We'll be doing a private expedition with NatGeo next year so will see how that goes. I'll do a blog for that trip next year so you can follow along on that one too.