Questions & Answers

No, we don’t run group tours. Water Buffalo Tours only specializes in PRIVATE and CUSTOMIZABLE tours; we do not team our guests up in groups.

So if you book a tour for 2 persons, there will be only 4 participants on the trip: the 2 guests, our guide and driver.
Yes! We don’t have a required minimum to book a tour and solo travelers are welcomed to join us! And if you are worried about not having anyone to chat with, our guide and driver will make you think twice! (Actually, our driver don’t speak English but they can always use their hands and body).

If you are travelling in a big group, please feel free to contact us directly and we’ll see if we can work it out.
We are a very small team with fewer than 7 guides, and we intend to keep it that way so we can better control the service quality. The drawback for not having so many guides is that we cannot run too many tours in a day.

If you are interested in booking a tour with us, we would recommend you doing so at least 2 months in advance to ensure that there is availability on your preferred date(s). We do accept bookings up to 12 hours before the tour date however, based on our open spots.
At the moment, we use Paypal, Western Union and Bank Transfers as our means of collecting payment/deposit.

If you would like to pay in advance by credit card, the payment will need to be processed through one of the above methods to us. Please keep in mind that we will only be able to accept this kind of payment at least 3 days before the tour.There will also be surcharges from the third parties if you prefer this payment method

At the tour’s pickup, we expect to receive the payment in cash in Vietnamese Dong, in accordance to the Vietnamese Government’s Laws of E-Commercial. We are happy to help you cash out if you don’t have the right currency available.

Please keep in mind that we may require a 30%-50% deposit for booking a tour.
First of all, thank you so very much for deciding to travel with us.

Due to our daily workload, we might be a bit slow in replying to your request. We are so sorry in advance for the wait if any.

That being said, we try our best to reply all booking requests/inquiries within 48 hours. If you don’t hear anything from us after that time frame, don’t hesitate to contact us again in case your request determined to stay on the net.

Also, there are countless times that our replies would end up in our guest’s Spam/Junk Mail Folder accidentally, due to some filters from Google and business mail domains, so you may want to take a look at those folders as well. If this is the case, we would really appreciate it if you can un-mark our emails as spam. Thank you!
Unfortunately, we don’t have a ground office. Our company is 100% online-based, all our operations and administrations are done via emails and phone calls only. Hooray for no mark-up cost!

We believe that email exchange is the more efficient way to communicate. If you are in Saigon and prefer talking than typing, feel free to dial +84 972 977 778 and have a pleasant chat with Mr. Khoi, our Managing Director.
Absolutely. We design our tours to be entertained and suitable for guests of all ages, and are listed in TripAdvisor’s Guide to Ho Chi Minh City for Families. In fact, nearly 50% of our trips have children and elders as participants.

We can provide ONE booster seat for one of your kids for the car trips. Our seat fits children from 9kg to 36kg. If you have more than 1 kid with you, or your kid is too small/big for our seat, you may consider bringing a car seat of your own.

We might ask for medical records of guests who are 70 years and above. As long as they are fit and healthy, we are happy to have them with us.
Yes, we have had children as young as 8 months old on our tours. However, children this young MUST be strapped to one of the parents at all time outside of the car. Please bring along some type of baby carriers/harnesses/slings in which your baby feel most comfortable for this purpose. We do not have those available.
For safety reasons, we do not provide small bikes for young children who are under 12 years of age, as local traffics behavior is quite different to that from the West or developed countries.

If your kid is big enough to sit on their own, they can either sit on the back of your bike, or on a back seat of a scooter driven by our driver.

If your kid is too small to sit alone, he/she will sit on a scooter, in between our scooter driver and a parent to support him/her.

Please rest assured that the ride is safe on flat and quiet villages’ paths at the speed of no more than 25km/h. We have done the same way for many families with young children. Kids really loved the scooter ride!

Your guide will discuss this matter with you at the start of the tour and make decisions on case-by case basis.

Please keep in mind that according to Vietnamese law, children 8 years and older are not allowed to share the scooter’s back seat with another passenger.
I’m sorry to say that we don’t offer car-and-driver rental services. Our drivers don’t speak English and do not specialize in customer care. If we run a tour in such conditions, it is highly likely that things will go south very fast.

The only times we run a trip without a guide are on point-to-point and airport transfers.
I’m sorry to say that we only run tours on ground vehicles.

We do include some cruising time on our Mekong Delta tours however. Waterways are not all to the Delta, there are also a lot to see on land.
For the day trip to Mekong Delta, the only floating market that is within travel distance from Saigon in a day trip is the Cai Be floating market (2.5-hour drive from Saigon).

However, we have suspended our operation to Cai Be floating market for years. It is because the market has become too touristy with many tourist' shops involved. Also, the market is very quiet these days due to the significant improvement of the local infrastructure in the area.

On top of that, all floating markets in the region start around 5:30am and get very quiet after 8:30am. Thus, we only bring our clients to the early floating markets of Phong Dien & Cai Rang on our 2-day or 3-day trips.