About Us

All Points East

About All Points East: Our aim is to combine the best of both worlds with ‘Western’ organizational and logistical skills associated with the in-depth local knowledge and expertise of our locally employed staff.

We’re also very proud, and reckon it’s a good sign, that many of our staff, both full-time and freelance have been with us for many years so are all well versed in the signature All Points East style as well as being highly experienced. Our tours hope to show you the ‘must-see’ sites and some of the lesser-known ones but importantly doing this in a relaxed, flexible and fun way. We won’t forget you’re on holiday and guides’ social skills are at least as important as knowing exactly which year that temple was built in!

Starting out

We set up All Points East (then operating as Gecko Travel) in late 1999 with offices in both the UK and Thailand and ran our first Thai tours in early 2000. Even 20 years ago Southeast Asia was a different place with just fledgeling WiFi, few mobile phones and a far more basic transport infrastructure plus of course a far more limited choice of hotels and eateries. When we added Laos and Cambodia to our destinations in 2001 the countries barely had sealed roads (none at all in the latter case), only patchy electricity and almost zero WiFi. Even places like Siem Reap or Luang Prabang were still relatively off the beaten track back then!

Today

20 years later we’re still going (we like to think) strong and while we’re not going to be buying a company jet any time soon (never the intention), the passion’s not diminished. We’re proud of our 2 decades of running successful tours (yes there’s been the occasional hiccup – it’s the nature of the business) and admittedly smug at managing to remain genuinely independent, with genuinely small group sizes and not compromising on our mixture of off the beaten track and well-known sites recipe.