3 of the best travel tours I’ve ever experienced

I’ve done my fair share of tours in my travels: the good, the bad and the downright awkward. While travelling through Vietnam recently, I started thinking back on past adventures. I relived my best mishaps, closest shaves with death and worst travel sickness stories. I also managed to nail down my top three favourite touring experiences so far.

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We Hate Tourism Tours

At number three is Portugal’s, and more specifically, Lisbon’s We Hate Tourism Tours. I found these guys online and since I only had a weekend to explore the city it looked like a great way to do it quickly. I signed up for the day trip about a week before arriving in Lisbon. A common theme of my favourite tours is how good the tour leader is. Knowledge and safe driving is one thing, but personality and energy make for a far more interesting experience. My tour leader Marcos had heaps of both. He was a dead-set nutter. I loved him immediately.

The tour starts in Lisbon, where you’ll be transported in some pretty funky wheels to the hills of Sintra. After that, it’s a day full of amazing sights, local food and red wine-induced laughing. The tour ran for seven hours but the time flew and Marcos rattled off facts about his city and entertained us with stories riddled with his anti-establishment views. We toured the sun-soaked coastline, drinking wine, eating Portuguese tarts and listening to Eddie Vedder. Worth every euro.

Book We Hate Tourism Tours here!

XO Tours

At number two is Ho Chi Minh City’s XO Tours. I stumbled across these scooter tours via a news article I found while staying in a Saigon hotel. I’d done a bit of sightseeing already but found moving around the city a bit of a pain. Air quality is poor and walking is hot, humid and life-threatening. Check this video for what I mean. I don’t recommend booking this one on a whim like I did as it’s very popular.

Somehow, I jagged the last two spots on the Foodie Tour on my last day in Vietnam and the friendly scooter guides arrived at my hotel to pick me up. Over the next five hours, I ripped around Saigon in the craziest traffic I have ever seen and stopped all over the place to eat some of the most interesting local street foods. Not normally that adventurous with food, I’m glad I tried the barbecued frog, goat and crab, but after seeing and smelling it right under my nose I drew the line at balut. The group of scooters (there were about 20 of us) made its way across the city to a range of districts I would never have had the chance of experiencing on foot. It was easily the best dong I spent in Saigon.

Book XO Tours here!

Rough Tours

Finally, my favourite tour by a long way is Morocco’s Rough Tours. Having just moved to London, I was getting down about the unsuccessful job hunt and the gloomy November weather. Sick of sitting around feeling sorry for myself, I decided to head for the warmest climate I could afford to get to. I knew very little about Morocco so it was the ultimate exotic getaway.

Online reviews were my go-to, and I found Rough Tours listed as the number one tour operator in Morocco. A couple of days later, I’d booked flights and organised a meeting at the Marrakech airport. It was a private tour, and I was unsure how it would pan out, being just me and a guide in a 4WD for 9 days driving thousands of kilometres through Morocco. Youseff was my wicked guide, along with his trainee sidekick Said, and together they gave me some of my favourite travel memories.

I drove the terrain of the original Dakar rally, wandered through heaving local markets, rode camels into the Sahara desert, sandboarded under the midnight stars and drank Berber tea around a fire singing and playing the drums. The most unexpected thing about Morocco was how amazingly beautiful the landscape is. Youseff was so passionate about his country and his Berber heritage I was hanging off every bit of information he shared with me. Rough Tours got me right into the landscape of Morocco.

Book Rough Tours here!

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