Email Info from Realasia Re Klongs
 

For those discussing this yesterday and interested I have received the info back by email:
Tour information of Bangkok Boat Tour - "Houses on stilts and riverside life" (Daily 09.30-16.30) We have developed a special guided canal tour which will bring you to places hardly visited by tourists. You will travel by different kind of boats and enjoy riverside life at its best. During this tour you will see beautiful temples and other interesting sights. Again we will let you encounter the Real Asian way of water life and mingle as much as possible with the local people. We will use any available local transportation during our trips. Even today many parts of Bangkok are only accessible by boat. In these parts concrete roads are hard to be found. Here the vast development of the city of Bangkok went past. Many Thai families live here their traditional lives in quietness and peace. Many residents still depend on waterways for their daily transport as well as for their daily needs. Vendorboats offer everything from household staples to a bowl of fast cooked noodles. Mail arrives by boat too.

It is an entirely different Bangkok that you will see here - very quiet and peaceful, above all. The longtailboat takes you along lots of simple wooden houses as well as old colonial-style mansions, palm trees, fruit groves, spirit houses standing on pillars
in the water, Buddhist temples, and flower gardens.

09.30 hrs. In the morning gathering at the Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel on the banks of the mighty Chao Phraya River. We will depart on foot to discover the backstreets of Bangkok's China Town. Through small alleys we wander through
Bangkok's rich history. At the China Town boat pier we will board the Chao Phraya Express Boat to the outskirts of Bangkok. At the final stop at Nonthaburi Pier we will visit the local market and have lunch at a riverside restaurant.
After lunch we will board one of the famous "longtailboats" and proceed through small canals to parts of Bangkok which are only accessible by these boats. Discover rural canal life, no tourist in sight. Further into the greens the canals get even smaller so we will leave the longtailboat behind and proceed with even smaller canal boats, the so called "James Bond" boats. Here life is even more relaxed. In the late afternoon we will return to the Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel through a magnificent rural route, again by longtailboat. We will arrive there at approx 16.30 hrs.

Price per person Boat/Klong tour is Baht 1,750.= including transportation by public boat, longtail boats,
private James Bond boats, lunch, drinks, insurances etc

Has anyone taken this tour? Would be interested in hearing about it from someone who took it.

Cosmo:

what is the web site or e mail address of the organization that sent this to you: real asia?

It sounds wonderful, but as glorialf said, has anyone taken this tour?

How do I get in touch with this tour company...and fast? I'll be leaving for BK soon and will be at the Royal Orchid for one night...before changing hotels to another part of town... so, I'd like to book it by tomorrow if possible.I've been down a few klongs, but not extensively and would like to explore them more! Happy Travels!

please let us know how it goes.. from what i've read you can get the same from paying 50cents local shutle up too Nortaburi. ok minus james bond boats. Im with RKh-- you can get a better deal from just nagotiating with a longboat driver on the spot. NO DOUGHT..

In my experience, these tours which tout that you'll see the "real Asia" that no one else sees show you the same thing any other tour does. It'll be cheaper to arrange your own tour and you'll have the flexibility to do what you want.

I met a large group of people who where touring with a company that billed itself as showing them the things that no one else saw in Asia (it might even have been this company). They were on a VERY expensive whirlwind tour that billed the lao-lao village on the way to the Pak Ou caves as being a "premier silk-weaving village" for instance. (For those who have been there, you know that the goods in this river town are very poor quality, and it is not a traditional silk-weaving village). Anyway, they were seeing routine tourist stuff in a large group, totally insulated from experiencing even a short conversation with a local.

I'm wondering if this is a group or private tour?

Sorry for the delayed response - time difrence in Austrlia (good morning to a lot of you! ha )
The webaddress is www.realasia.net
Ive decided to hire my own but thought it maybe of interest to someone on the forum.

i think the trip looks fabulous...it ought to at almost $44 per person...

this is a group tour i am sure...a larger group that is broken down to smaller groups for the smaller boats upstream...

i think this would be a very very long, albeit interesting, day with no way to beg out if you got too hot, etc...

cosmo...good choice to do it on your own...

from the description, i believe that the long boat rides they offer are in different areas than what you would see on the tour...they are further north up river...

one other problem i have with this tour is that it is a whole day...people with only a few days in bkk should not be wasting a whole day (not realy wasting, but using) on this...2-4 hours on your own in a long tail boat is sufficient...and at a fraction of the cost...for 4 hours for 2-8 people it might only be 1600B total not 1750B each....yes lunch is included, but i for one do not want to eat in these back klong areas.....

i would find the organized tour difficult if there were say 50 or 100 people who show up on a given day...my day...

Thanks, Cosmo. If anyone does take this tour, please let us know how you like it.

I am the one who originally posted their ref on the site as I have done their cycling tour. The organizers are a couple of guys - very attentive to their clients, we had a young girl who was not a good cyclist in our tour and they insisted the parents cycle ahead and one of them looked after her the entire trip -and for the cycling tour they never get more than 20 as they rent their own cycles. They took us on a path we would never have found on our own. We really enjoyed it and thought it was well worth the 1000 baht per head we paid (which in this instance included cycle hire). Might be worthwile to ask them whether their numbers for the klong tours ever run to 50. Also, we really enjoyed meeting the mostly Dutch tourists who had shown up for the cycling tour - def a good day IMO!

Thanks Hobbes, I couldnt find your original posting when I sent this one - I think it looks great. For anyone that doesnt usually travel independently its a great compromise. Much better than taking a regular tour. Sometimes this sort of thing turns out a real gem doesnt it - as it sounds your bike trip was... ride around Bangkok on a bike by yourself.. yeah ...real fun..not ..but with company and unknown areas a real treat.
thanks again for the company name

Thanks for the info. I'm one who travels independently 99% of the time and I kind of just organize things on my own...but I might try this day tour just for the heck of it. My BIG problem with it is that it's ALL day long. I can see maybe 4 hours max, but all day sounds a bit much! Happy Travels!