26 March 2008

Greetings from a "warm" Chiangmai

New & Unique Elephant Experience in Chiangmai
In Chiangmai, we now have a Brand New, Private Elephant Experience – just opened. Elephant Life Experience is Private “Hands On” Elephant Program ONLY for Your Clients Private Party.  (Not Joining with any other Clients or Group Tour).

For a Full description of this New concept please see... Elephant Life Experience ….and if you think this would be of interest for your Clients – just let us know.

Also if you have any Clients with a regular Elephant Day Trip already booked with us, that you think may like to change – again just contact us and we can advise availability & the revised costs accordingly.
…as always we also have brief summary on our Chiangmai Day Excursions Website.

Airport Departure Tax at Siem Reap Airport
For you convenience, Siem Reap Airport will now accept Visa Card for payment of the Airport Departure Tax  (Currently US$25 Per person), as well as payment in US$ Cash.

Songkran Festival. 13-16 April
This is one of Thailand’s Major Festivals - Although this celebration of the Traditional Thai New Year is nationwide, the festivities are at their highest and most enthusiastic in Chiangmai. The Principal attraction is the customary good luck sprinkling of water on each other - which gets somewhat out of hand !! - (Imagine Chicago in a heat wave then someone opens all the Fire Hydrants combined with a mini Mardi Gras and you begin to get the idea !!).

This Festival will affect your Clients Programs in several ways depending on your Clients attitude:

• You will need to have a sense of humor !! - Most important !!
• If you want to walk almost anywhere in the City (during the daytime) you will get wet.
• Airport transfers and all road transportation in Chiangmai will take much longer than usual.
• There are many additional visitors to Chiangmai during this Festival (Local Thais from Bangkok and the Rest of Thailand, Regional Asian Visitors etc. as well as the "normal" Tourism Visitors) - so everywhere is absolutely packed
• Hotel Accommodation & Flights do get very heavily booked and are at a peak Premium- so these arrangements should be made well in advance
• Almost all businesses and banks close for sometime during the Holiday (so we have to be careful as to what places we want to visit are actually open).
• If you take the above into consideration – then you will have Fun…

…And apart from all that – essentially everything here will be closed from 11-16 April. !!  -

So if you do have anything urgent – please do try to contact us before 10 April.
Although we will be monitoring e-mails during the Festival Period– please excuse any delays in responses from here during this period!!!

US$ : Thai Baht Exchange Rates
As we mentioned last month with the present Currency Exchange Rate Decline between the US$ & Thai Baht, it has become necessary for us to adjust our costs to compensate for the now large differences from the earlier exchange rates.

This now seems to have stabilized for now and the new rates we have determined, will now apply to all new quotations with immediate effect.

Any proposals for future Programs that we have quoted for, but have not yet been accepted, may need to be adjusted and we will advise on this on a case by case basis.
(Again if you feel a proposal from us may be affected, then do please contact us as soon as possible.).

As always if you have any specific questions on this, please do not hesitate to contact me.

That's it for now. Many Thanks and Take Care
David, Wanna & Vachira
And all at Wanna Tours.

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