1. About tour trip fee

Tour Trip fees shown in our web site include everything but drinks, i.e. one day trip (no overnight stay) includes a lunch, tickets and so on, while a overnight tour trip includes dinner, breakfast, accommodations and so on.
For trekking tours, it includes, in addition to mentioned above, sleeping bags, mosquito nets, blankets, small back-packs and so on free of charge. It might be able to say that almost all the stuff is already included in
advance and you do not need to bring any additional money. Please make sure what is to be included in your tour tip beforehand. In some case, a Chief tribe tour arranged by other travel agencies might not include an entrance
fee to the Chief tribe village and to be separately charged. In another case, "including lunch" might be just lunch, and a cup of coffee might not be included, which is a bit sad. Please ask again about lunch menu for sure.

2. About guides

Our policy is that we will only employ guides who have more than 10 years experience of guidance. Chiang Rai is a national border area, and the quality and experience of guides are extremely important to escort tourists.
There is an exception that we employ guides who have been trained under our supervision for more than one year while they are at the Chiang Rai-Rachapatt University, or taking a course to be a touring guide at
Chiangrai Teacher's College, which is one of the extracurricular courses of the Rachapatt University. Furthermore, even for guides of more than ten years experience, we will employ them after we check their qualification,
knowledge and so on. Pat, a company director, and Homy, a senior/longest serving member, are teaching tourism courses at the Rachapatt university, and our guides introduced in our web site have all achieved acceptance
criterion.

3. For safe and comfortable tours

Please check a vehicle to be used and an availability of drivers to escort.

We, J Travel, escort our customers with our private driver while traveling. Some travel agency in Chiangrai sometimes provides a guide, who also drives a vehicle at the same time. A guide is heavy work loaded all through the day, and furthermore in general, people in Thai drive badly. As a result, it is not so good idea for only one person to drive while guiding from the safety point of view. A guide will take care of customers from departure to
destination while a driver will prioritize customer's safety, driving itself, car maintenance and baggage security for customers, and caring for customers in case they get lost during tours. We believe that these collaboration will make tours safe as well as comfortable.

About a vehicle to be used

Chiangrai is located at the northernmost Thailand but the temperature is more than 30 centigrade during the day all through the year. It would be intolerably hot in a car without an air conditioner. Some company escorts customers with a pick-up truck, whose loading part have been remodeled. Others provide jeep tours but not so comfortable to ride on. You might be more exhausted at the end of the trip than you travel with a mini van or a passenger vehicle if you travel with a jeep. J Travel will own several cars and escort you with one of them on customer's request. Some special trip might require a jeep only but in this case, we will explain to our customers so they can understand it in advance.
We recommend that you check an availability of a driver and a vehicle itself
when you find an cheap tour trip.

4. Difference between guides and a tour agency/company

A guide will take care of customers after a tour agency, which receives a TAT License from the Travel Authority of Thai government, requests to provide tour guidance services. A tour agency hosts, responsible-arranges,
and make a tour contract with tourists. It is important to know that an agency with TAT license is only one to hosts, responsible-arranges, and make a tour contract. It is prohibited for a guide to sell tours. In the case
that you are asked to make contracts for tours when you get to know guides at a guest houses or through trips, please make sure which tour agency they belong to. In addition, when you apply for tour trips, it is recommended
that you go to a tour agency to make a contract.
Furthermore, when you apply for a tour trip at a guest house, it is recommended that you make sure if they have a TAT license or not, their responsibility, which agency they commission to. There are differences in contents of the TAT License certified for guides and for tour agencies.

5. About a tour course

It was about 15 years ago that tourists abroad visited the village of Chiangrai at a larger scale. It is one of the great places for Chiangrai sight seeing to visit the villages of the hill tribe. There are several hillr tribes living around the area of Chiangrai and some of them are introduced in guidebooks for a long time. For instance, AKHA tribe, which is famous with silver ornament attached hat, and YAO tribe, which is famous with red scarf. If a tour trip to their villages is included in your course, please ask where they are. A village located on the right hand of Chiangrai. It has been introduced in guidebooks since more than 20 years ago. Today, there are a lot of big sight seeing buses visiting their villages and these traditional villages have been completely changed, which look like commercially designed villages. We, J Travel, will take you to the other side of Chiangrai, the left hand. For people who want to visit the village of Lisu tribe or !
villages closely located at the area of Me-salong, we do not recommend to visit there since these places are "destroyed" by tourists. Over the past 10 years, we have donated money to the villages of hill tribes.
Through the self support such as financial support, food supply, job placement, lifestyle guidance, or nvironmental consideration, we have well tied to those villages and even people, where we can invite tourists.

6.About the Villages of the Long Neck tribes

The settlement of the Long Neck tribes is not spontaneous occurring.
They are refugees from Myanmar and hold Thai citizenship without money, land or anything, They are having difficulties in living by themselves. Today, they are living in man made settlements under a Thai guardian of one of the villages. This guardian seems to be commercially minded since tourists need to pay for entrance to those villages. Some of the tourists has mentioned, "It looks like some kind of show and very difficult to watch.". Some
books/magazines or web pages have criticized these villages. We think that it is important for tourists to know the reality of Thai. If possible, we recommend that tourists spend time together with people in those villages.
We would like tourists to judge if it is good or not after seeing everything there. They indeed live there. There are two villages of the Long Neck tribes around the area of Chiangrai. One for commercially designed villages with souvenir shelves! , and the other for as naturally designed villages with their life style as possible. We like to invite tourists to the latter one, or provide homestay courses.

7. If you have questions?

We appreciate if you feel free to ask/request anything for our services since
you will spend your precious moments and money on tours in Chiang Rai.

We, J Travel, would like to listen to our customers and to serve them as sincerely as possible.