danasgirl

Hi everyone. I have corresponded via email with Tong regarding spending a day with one of her guides for our visit this June. I have sent emails three emails to her in the last 10 days without any reply from Tong. I fear that I may have offended her or something. Though I have looked back at all of our emails and don't see anything that I may have said that may have put her off, but I am at a loss as to why she isn't answering my emails. Does anyone know if maybe she is on vacation? From all the rave reviews on the forum here, this really doesn't seem like Tong...I don't know what to do.

rhkkmk

i have had numerous communications with her in the last 10 days ...maybe she did not receive them....

i will write her now...

rhkkmk

i have written her....what name will she know you by??

danasgirl

robinson

bonacer22

I wrote to her last week and got an automated message from her email saying she was out of town.

jgg

Earlier on in my planning I had e-mailed her with my regular e-mail address. As it has gotten closer to our date I was e-mailing her with no response. Then I tried my yahoo e-mail address and I heard from her right away - and she said she never received the other e-mails. So if you may try that.

danasgirl

sorry rhkkmk, I read 'what last name will she know you by' my full name is Heather Robinson.


Thanks for all the feedback, I really hope that she is out of town, I didn't get an automated response back from my emails but maybe I am having email problems though nothing is bouncing back to me...who knows, I apprecite your responses. I will try from my secondary email address and see if I get a response.

Heather

travelgirlatl

I am in a similar situation--have been corresponding with her and haven't heard back in response to my last email for several days. I get the impression that she is often gone on overnight tours without good internet access, though I could be wrong. Will probably just email her again if I haven't heard from her in the next day or so.

danasgirl

PHEW! well good then, glad to hear it isnt only me. travelgirlatl: I figured the same thing, that she was away on overnighters, but when it got to be over a week with no reply I was sure I had said something wrong and was just mortified! I will just be patient and wait a while longer before I pester her again.

Kathie

There are email problems between here and Thailand. I have people I regularly correspond with and sometimes my email does not get to them and vice versa. Sometimes it bounces back, but often I don't get any notice that it didn't go through.

bmttokyo

danasgirl,

I was just with Tong this past Saturday 3/8/08. She is very well & her usual jovial, gracious self. As you probably surmise by now, she is in everyone's WANTED list. She does go on a number of overnighters making it challenging to respond to emails which she normally does at the end of her long day.

Hang in there. If you do your part in corresponding, she delivers in the end - there on time, cheerful & ready to introduce another client to her beloved city, Bangkok. At the end of the day, you will say goodbye to a friend & will probably be making plans to see her & her city in the very near future.

I know our family certainly did !!!

rhkkmk

i just got a msg back from her....she says she gets as many as 1200 e mails per day....WOW....she responds to the urgent ones and the ones just before people come....

she said resend your mail today and write URGENT in the subject line...

i would write it 3 times to catch her eye..

danasgirl

rhkkmk:

Thanks for the email...I can't believe she gets up to 1200 emails per day. My husband complains about getting 100 emails per day...hah! I did get a brief email from Tong today, so we are back in contact, thanks to you. You're the best.

Thyra

I believe that Tong also told me she has a long commute out of town for her family and sometimes she has a day or so that she can't respond: FYI Tong is really just an incredible guide and well worth trying!! She is just a top star person!

danasgirl

Update: I just emailed Tong from my Yahoo.com acct and immediately rec'd the auto responder that says she may take a few days to get back to me. So I guess my gmail acct was not communicating with her Yahoo acct and that's why I wasn't hearing back from her...she wasn't getting any of the emails I was sending!

AskOksana

Back from our 3 week Thailand & Cambodia trip... although Tong was not our guide in BKK (Jerry, who was a delight was)... we did meet her in person & had very unpleasant, stressful experiences with her... which was quite surprising, considering the glowing reviews she gets here.

We found her pushy, hyper, very aggressive, rude, obsessed with money, dismissive... harassing and she let it slip that she has "1500 unanswered emails."

We'd pre-arranged for her to send a sedan to pick us up at the airport & THAT was a frightening nightmare... she'd outright lied about whom she was sending to pick us up & he nearly killed us on the Skyway.

More details when I'm less jetlagged.

I know a lot of people think she is wonderful... I really wanted to like her, but I can only tell you the truth of our experience... it was very unpleasant.

She nearly ruined our first evening & tried to ruin our last evening... with phone calls & faxes, to the point I had to ask the Pen. to block her phone calls.

She talked non-stop, didn't listen & interrupted... like someone who had taken some kind of stimulant... her behavior the first evening was bizarre. My husband thought she was bizarre & hyper, like someone on drugs.

It was very different than other people's experiences... Tong was a nightmare to deal with... like a telemarketer that will not stop calling.

Jerry was lovely, reliable & IMO being taken advantage of by Tong... who booked the slight man with a party of 4 (including a large, elderly, disabled man in a wheelchair w/ NO one to help him lift/move/push the wheelchair).

When we were in REP, I had my licensed guide Tek hire a porter every day we went to temples & on the big temple days (Angkor Wat) two porters, whose sole job it was to lift, petite me in the borrowed wheelchair.

The notion that Tong was not getting a porter/assistant to help Jerry (who was not much bigger than me) is appalling to me.

AskOksana

To clarify my post, Tong had booked Jerry for 4 days w/ a party of 4, one of whom was a large, older man who was disabled & in a wheelchair... and she expected Jerry to take these people around for the same rate... and without any help.

Jerry's father had suffered a stroke a few years ago & Jerry was forced to sell his restaurant to care for his father & he now has compressed disks in his back from lifting his heavy father... the notion that Tong expects Jerry to push a wheelchair bound, disabled, large American man around w/o help is incredible to me.

I am not wheelchair bound & we only used the wheelchair when the ground was paved, flat & it involved a long distance to walk.

filmwill

Tong is a crack addict?! Who knew?! The SCANDAL! All this AND she has strategically-placed wiseguys who pick folks up at the airport only to try and off them on the Expressway? I better reconsider my plans for this winter with her!

I would be slightly up-in-arms if I even had the energy to respond to this post right now--only that it's obviously no surprise that Oksana can somehow manage to villefy the kindest, most generous person I think most of us have had the pleasure of meeting in our lifetime. I don't think I can recall one negative thing said about her amongst hundreds of people who have used her here or glowed about her warm spirit, and her infectious energy. To say she's 'obsessed with money' is beyond insulting to me personally--since my experience, two years running, is exactly the opposite. So you'll pardon me if I rip into you a bit here.

Oh well--maybe it was just the canceled reservation at D'Sens (or the idiotic hostess there who didn't speak English)?...or the evil, abusive, torturous monks at the Tiger Temple?...or the horrible oysters outside of New Zealand? Something on your trip must've been worse than that pushy Tong, mustn't it have?

It's been so nice and calm on the boards lately--why, oh why, must you come back and torture us all with your misery?

I'm just picturing you being picked up at Suvarnabhumi in a full-length mink coat--holding a poodle in an Hermes purse--and surrounded by a gaggle of porters--and saying 'dahhhling, it's so awfully dreadful here!'. If that was the case, I think I'd find most of your posts more palatable, actually.

Your posts are rude, condescending, indicting, lacking any fundamental research or experience...and always negative.

But hey, welcome back! Happy you had such a nice trip--and such a warm and wonderful first post!

rhkkmk

i have heard tong's side of this, and she says much the same things about you, so i guess it is a draw....as i know tong, i tend to side with her and quite honestly some of your private e mails to me were rude as well...

i don't want to get in the middle of this but i think billy has sent the appropriate message...

boy dana i bet you did not think you would get this kind of response!!

JM---i do need to ask one question however....did you refuse to go into the grand palace becasue the entry fee was 250 B instead of the 100 B you had read someplace?? did you also quibble about some other price which involved 100 B difference in price (slightly over $3)?

lcuy

I am totally with you on this filmwil. Based on asko's earlier comments, I actually thought of warning Tong about her in advance, but never got around to it...Perhaps someone else did? >;-)

I have never had such a genuinely fun day with a guide who went to such effort to make us happy. She listened to what WE wanted and rearranged our day to fit. I had a number for a place to buy silverware; she called and got me the price and a website where I could order it. We loved her tee shirt...she tracked down the store where it was sold and drove us about 45 minutes out of the way (long after the clock had gone off on our day) to take us there. I was having a bit of Delhi Belly...she got me extra water and extra cooled towels. I could go on and on about her.

You must have really had a personality conflict!!