Dear crosscheck,

I've read all your posts re: the Anantara with great interest and they have been quite helpful as I plan my own trip to the GT area.

Particularly, I have a question re: the guide you found, Doi/Toy. Do you mind me asking about how much you paid for her services and what the fee included? I have contacted the Anantara about her services and they quoted me 8,560 THB for a van driver and Doi/Toy for 10 hours. My specific itinerary includes Mae Salong and Doi Tung. Does this sound reasonable to you?

Thank you for your response.

Hi MPT,

We were with Toy (have been corrected about her name) plus van/driver for 6 hours. I think we paid 850B an hour, which would make your quote about right. My husband is out of town but when he returns tomorrow I will ask him to dig up the bill.

All of the tour prices were very high, but compared to how much it would have been for the pre-packaged three country tour (I think 4980pp), we felt like we were getting a good deal.

When do you go on your trip? Can't wait to hear about it because you are going to two places we did not get to see. You will adore Toy. We are not really "guide people", but I wish we could have had more time with her.

I'm in the middle of posting my trip report and should have the Anantara segment up by Wednesday.

that's about $24 per hour....i think that is very high....very very high...

Agree - Just think of all the coffins you could buy.

But we rationalized the cost by comparing it to the ridiculously-priced package tours offered by the hotel.

There were cheaper guides available in town, but Toy was so wonderful that it was worth the extra cost.

Sorry, for just now posting. The site was acting up on me this morning.

We will be at the Anantara from 3/15-17 and are really looking forward to it. My husband really enjoyed our time in Sa Pa, Vietnam last year.

Although the rate is high, we might consider it anyway as this is our fist trip to Thailand, don't know the language, or area.

Thanks for your response, and I look forward to posting my trip report!

MPT - We also have posted about using Toy. Since we were going through Anantara, we had no choice but to book through them, both the car and Toy's services. The only money to Toy was the tip we paid her. We paid a mind-blowing 5,250 bht for the car for an entire day, plus 214 bht/hour for Toy's services. Surprisingly, we were only charged for 8 hours of Toy's time, but actually were with her for 10 hours. The time flew by though - she's a terrific guide. And as shockingly expensive as this was, it was considerably cheaper than any of the set day-long excursions through Anantara. If you're staying there w/out a car, you're stuck doing their excursions if you want to see anything of the interesting countryside around you. Claire

Interesting about the car/driver being the more expensive part of the package. I wonder one could hire a car and driver in town and then get Toy through the hotel.

Crosscheck,

I was thinking the same thing since we need tranport from the CR airport to the Anantara. Most likely we will rent a car and try and hire just Toy to guide as around.