Audley Travel
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Endorses animal cruelty
Last year we visited Vietnam with Audely (my first experience travelling with them as an adult). We had said from day 1 we never wanted to do anything that exploited animals or children or local people. The day we landed we assumed we’d get an email or message from our driver/guide to let us know what time they’d pick us up. We heard ZERO. We called the out of offices number and heard nothing for hours. Finally after having to make multiple international calls we got confirmation of a time. We get picked up, and taken to our boat tour and get told we’re going to have lunch at a local woman’s house (something we’d also said we didn’t want to do). And that we’d be visiting an orphanage… to this day I can’t understand why visiting an orphanage is a tourist attraction - but Audely seem to think it is! We get to the local lady’s house and within minutes her and the guide drag a 4M long python snake out of a 2x5M cage. We were horrified. The local woman then proceeded to hit the snake about to get it to wake up and then tried to get us to put it over our shoulders to take pictures. We refused. The whole experience was distressing and awful to witness. The orphanage was “better” than we had expected as we didn’t interact with anyone but it felt awkward and uncomfortable. I contacted Audely as soon as I could and to be fair to them they acted and made apologies. We did get somewhat of a refund - the total trip was around £6,000 - which for what we got on reflection was daylight robbery. As a company that prides itself on being leaders in ethical tourism I’m shocked that they directly contribute to animal cruelty. By booking tourists on these trips they continue to fuel a need for animals to be treated badly.