Testimonial
4 November 2009
15 Comments
Please send your email to info@vacationindonesiatours.com or vacaindo_tours@yahoo.com or for a quicker reply please dial mobile number +62-81341217751
Please send your email to info@vacationindonesiatours.com or vacaindo_tours@yahoo.com or for a quicker reply please dial mobile number +62-81341217751
Had a wonderful 8 day trip in Sulawesi with Darwin his team in the Vacation Indonesia Tours. We took some time to prepare everything via the internet. Darwin proved to be patient and we got the trip we wanted.
Lore Lindu NP and Bogani Nani NP are highly recommended, certainly if you have Darwin and his team take care of the arrangements. Everything was well planned: knowledgeable guides, efficient transport, good stays, good food and snacks and last but not least a lot of fun.
Thanks you guys and we hopefully meet again.
Sigmar & Anja
sbg_kock@yahoo.com
DOF Travel, Birdlife Denmark http://www.doftravel.dk would like to thank Vacation Indonesia Tours (VIT), Darwin Sumang and his crew for three wonderful weeks of birdwatching and adventures. Everything went perfect. Logistic was fine, and when problems Darwin and his crew solved them immediately! We were a group of 13 persons visiting Flores, Komodo, Sumba, Timor and Bali for birdwatching – and it was great! We ended up with a quite good list of birds. I can highly recommend VIT as tour operators. I am definitely going to make new trips to Indonesia together with this company.
Thanks for making a difference! We enjoyed travelling with your kind and helpful crew and their high standard of service.
Thomas W. Johansen
thomas.w.johansen@gmail.com
Dear Nurlin and Darwin,
Just a note of thanks for our wonderful birding/cultural tour of Bali and
East Java. You were a terrific guide and so was Yudi, and Putu was
an excellent driver. The boat trip to see the Bali Mynahs in Bali Barat
was great fun and of course the birds are a real treat to see (not to
mention the wild green junglefowl and the black-winged starlings). The
night drive at Baluran National Park with Ahmed was probably the best night drive we
have ever done for both night birds and mammals. These are just the
highlights – the whole trip was a delight and was well organized with nice
accomodations and with many opportunities to be flexible. We really
enjoyed ourselves and of course saw some terrific birds and mammals!
We are already looking forward to doing North Sulawesi and Halmahera with
you next year. I’ll be contacting our friends about dates and arrangements
and will be getting back to you when we settle on the possibilities.
In the meantime we hope the next tour goes well and our very best wishes,
Jeri and Hugh
rdhdingle@ucdavis.edu
Hi Nurlin:
Sharing some pictures from Ed.
Thanks for taking good care of us during the trip. We are pleased that the trip went well and the organisation was good. We are disappointed with the Geomalia and Bee-eater but there are many other birds that made up for the two. Overall we enjoyed ourselves very much and both of us think that you did a great job! We hope to return in the not too distant future to Wartabone, Halmahera and Papua!
I’ll see you some of my pictures when I have the time to process them,
Take care and see you again!
Cheers!
Kim Chuah,
Singapore
pittalover@yahoo.com.sg
Hi Darwin (Director Of VIT Tours)
Lesser Sundas 2010 and Sulawesi & Halmahera 2011
Let me reiterate what a difference you made during our recent tour through the Lesser Sundas. Your organizational skills made all the difference in a region where complex logistics and contingency plans are the standard expectation. Thanks to your attention to details we enjoyed a hassle-free trip without any unnecessary delays allowing us to concentrate totally on the region’s specialty birds. As a result of this time in the field combined with enthusiastic participants we were able to connect with every endemic and near-endemic possible along our route during our travels throughout the islands! It is my pleasure working with you and I look forward to future travels together; thank you again for helping make this tour such a success!
Very best,
David Shackelford
Email:neotropicalguide@hotmail.com
Website: http://www.rockjumper.co.za
I have been leading birding tours for 25 years, to all areas of the world. Darwin, Nurlin and Eddie of Vacation Indonesia Tours were absolutely first class on a recent tour I lead with them in Sulawesi and Halmahera. I would have no hesitation in recommending them; they knew the area well, knew the birds very well and most importantly, they knew exactly where to find them. They were also very good company, easy to work with and 100% honest. I will definitely work with them again in the near future.
Chris Doughty,
Director Peregrine Bird Tours P/L (Australia)
http://www.peregrinebirdtours.com
It would be impossible for me to recommend VIT more highly for a
birdwatching tour in Indonesia. I have now traveled with twice – once to Bali and eastern Java and once to
northern Sulewesi and Halmahera. Their skills in identifying birds, in
knowing the best birding sites, and in coordinating sometimes complicated
logistics are simply outstanding. They are well acquainted with the local
people at or near birding sites and this really facilitates a first rate
birding experience. In addition to excellent guides, the support staff is
also superb. The drivers and other staff made stays at even basic places
comfortable and enjoyable, even serving us super breakfasts of fresh fruit,
tasty crepes, and terrific coffee at early morning field sites! Special
needs are met with alacrity and grace. All are wonderful friendly people
interacting like a happy family AND they introduced us to wonderful
friendly people, making our tour much more than just finding good birds
(although there was plenty of that). One ends a tour with VIT with great
birds seen and a fond memory of a lovely trip with a group who are now good
friends!
I hope this helps to bring you good business…
Hugh
My wife Lorie and I took a nearly 3-weeks bird/nature watching trip through Indonesia that was arranged by Darwin Sumang’s group (Aug 5-25, 2011- Jakarta to Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Halmahera). I would highly recommend Darwin and his cohort of guides. Truly, everything about the trip went well, the planning and arrangements were flawless. We saw an excellent variety of birds, including many endemics and rarities, as well as many primates, and other species as well as some great forests and other habitats. We will post a list of species elsewhere. The guides were terrific not only with excellent eyes, ears and knowledge of the birds, but they matched our birding styles well. I am a longtime birder and ornithologist but not a hardcore lister and Lorie also likes photography so for us, in our mid 50s, the pace of the trip was perfect…up everyday before dawn and often out until late at night with a midday lunch and nap. In the end, we felt like we made many good friends on this trip. The trip also had adventures that we hadn’t actually anticipated from the initial itinerary, so many pleasant surprises. The accommodations and food were good to excellent, the food always plentiful and interesting. The Indonesia people were exceptionally friendly everywhere we went, and we were there during Ramadan, which made for a remarkable cultural experience as well. We would do it again, absolutely.
My sister, Pam, and I have just returned home from a wonderful month in Sulawesi and Halmehera and we can’t wait to tell the world about Vacation Indonesia Tours.
Darwin and Nurlin, combined with their large network of drivers and local guides, worked together to give us a holiday that we’ll remember for many years to come.Darwin and Nurlin are the perfect team; Darwin’s excellent organizational skills and attention to detail ensures that everything runs efficiently and seamlessly whilst Nurlin’s birding skills are exceptional, absolutely the best. He worked diligently to ensure we saw as many species as possible and, even though we missed out on a couple of target species, we appreciate that without his patient, expert guidance we would have been much less successful and much more bewildered!He also educated us with his knowledge and conviction and the entire experience helped us to understand more about the birds we were seeing and the place we were visiting.
Pam and I have no hesitation in recommending VIT Tours Email: info@vacationindonesiatours.com to anyone planning a trip to Indonesia and we wish Darwin and Nurlin the successful future they so deserve.
Warmest good wishes
Marion Jackson
I’ve just returned home from my small group birding tour to Sulawesi & Halmahera organised by VIT Tours, Email: info@vacationindonesiatours.com. We had a phenomenal time seeing many of our target birds and we all saw many lifers and endemics. apart fro mthe great birding in a very pleasant, extraordinarily friendly part of the world I would like ot thank Nurlin and Darwin for making the tour so very good in so many ways.
Especially impressive was the way that Darwin handled logistics. I can’t recall a tour in all my years of tour-leading where so much adaptability and flexibility was required and always on hand. As airlines changed schedules Darwin made a few calls, phoned ahead, changed a hotel here and there and “Hey Presto”: problem solved and we continued on an equally good (sometimes better) “plan B” or “C”. As the tour went on and he and Nurlin got to know us and our wishes and abilities, they adapted the tour to suit. The change of hotels and choice of site to visit for Wallace’s Standardwing was excellent. Nurlin was a gem in the field and as a traveling companion. His quiet ways in the field steadily got us as many of our target birds as he could muster. The endless early starts and some late finishes were well and truly above and beyond the call of duty: he worked so hard for us at all times. His bird knowledge and local knowledge of where to find species, and the way he and Darwin laid on additional expertise in the form of local guides to make doubly sure we were best provided for in finding the special birds, was greatly appreciated and an essential ingredient to a successful tour. Both Darwin and Nurlin were good fun to travel with – good humoured and full of information about their country. They deserve every success in their endeavours and I look forward to a return to cover the Lesser Sundas – there is plenty of Indonesia left to see!
Peter Roberts, Scotland UK
My husband, Clive Green, and I were part of a group of 7 who recently returned from a bird tour arranged for us by Darwin Sumang, a director of Vacation Indonesia Tours and all his staff. The trip was so well organized and met all our expectations for great birding sites and wonderful birds.
At times changes in the itinerary were needed, and they were handled with total professionalism and dispatch. Darwin Sumang and his people were fonts of knowledge, and very good company, as were the local guides and drivers they hired. We highly recommend them!
We just returned from a wonderful trip to Indonesia organized by VIT Tours (info@vacationindonesiatours.com ). Visiting Tanjung Puting Park by klotok boat and seeing the orangutans was something special. Ali was an excellent tour leader in Kalimantan. He is very knowledgeable about the orangutans and the challenges they face, and is clearly passionate about saving them and Indonesia’s other threatened wildlife. We applaud his dedication to conservation. Touring the local market in Samarinda with Ali was something we hadn’t expected and an added treat. After Kalimantan we birded in Sulawesi and Bali with Darwin and enjoyed every minute of it. The local birding guides that VIT provided in Lore Lindu and Bali Barat National Parks were excellent. One cannot imagine a better guide for Lore Lindu than Idris. When a huge, fallen tree blocked the road in Lore Lindu it became clear that Darwin knows all the right people in all the right places . In no time he had another vehicle meet us on the other side of the tree so we could continue on our way to Wuasa. We weren’t even late for lunch – a huge lunch, we might add. Darwin and Ali took care of all the details and made the trip easy and fun. We saw many wonderful birds and learned a lot about Indonesia while doing so. We wholeheartedly recommend VIT to anyone considering a vacation in Indonesia.
Janice and Bob Rogers, USA
boborjanice@yahoo.com
We have just finished a birding tour I lead of the Lesser Sundas which was organised by Darwin and his team. I have worked with Darwin before, in Sulawesi, and was very impressed with his assistance at that time, which is why I approached him for this trip.
As expected, he did not disappoint. Darwin ensured that local guides knew the sites for the birds that we were after. The accommodation was always adequate and sometimes very nice, as well as being as conveniently close as it is possible to be to the birding sites.
Darwin also repeatedly went the extra mile, helping with the little and sometimes not-so-little extra things that clients need from time to time. I would not hesitate to recommend his services.
Hi Darwin,
As one of the participants on a Feb 2012 trip to the Lesser Sundas organized by Greg Roberts, I, personally, thought you did a superb job of organizing all the logistics of flights, hotels, cars, drivers, food and guides and anything else that came up, like birthday cakes! – even when things changed 180 degrees, you remained calm, in control and got things rearranged. I was quite impressed with how you worked lunch the day we left Kisol (supposed to have lunch there) and bagged it all up for a grand feast at the top of Poko Renata! Amazing!! You were also very helpful in so many other ways that went above and beyond what you probably agreed to do. Thanks for everything you did.
I`am birwatcher from Poland focused on finding rare birds. Indonesia is a great place for birdwatching because there are many endemics species. Darwin knows very well how to organize a good trip. We spent a few days in Lore Lindu National Park in Sulawesi. It is a unique place on the Earth. Excellent organization and a bit of luck allowed us to see all the most important bird species in the region. Bird of the trip was observation very shy Geomalia.
I recommend Darwin to organize expeditions in Indonesia because he is very professional. I like this guy.
See you next time Darwin.
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