More on my horrible Thomson holiday to Tunisia - The excursions

Written by Andy Sharman Friday, 17 July 2009 12:47

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Well as you all know I have already blogged about the horrendous Thomson trip to Tunisia I posted about before. I have already explained about the lies the travel agent in Thomson travel agents in Leicester city centre told myself and my girlfriend about the location, and holiday. I thought I would add a bit more detail about the resort, and the excursions.

The first thing that springs to mind is one of the excursions which will be shown to be a big selling point of a trip to Tunisia, and that is the Thomson Sahara expedition - this will set you back around 200TND which is about £100, we were told it would be around £50-60 and quite frankly the truth about the Thomson sahara expedition is that it is over-priced, and you will need easily that much money to survive the 2 day trip spending over 20hours on the coach. Just to put in perspective the kind of facilities you will be offered to use on the way to and from the Sahara, I am very glad I got my Hepititis A jab, as the toilets were often compared to being worse then the "long drops" in Egypt.

Rather than ranting on for paragraphs and paragraphs about the horrible Thomson Sahara expedition excursion here is a list of what you can expect:

1. To pay over £100 per head (Even children - which I would not recommend taking)
2. To spend 20 of the 36 hours on a coach which will definately be at full capacity, and will not have a toilet on board.
3. Be expected to actually have to pay to use the horrible facilities during the bus trip on the sahara excursion.
4. You will be given a list of what you will need to take, it exclaims that you will need 20TND if you want to go on the camel ride, 10-20TND for drinks, and a few TND for tipping - If you quadruple this, you will be close to what you need.
5. The bar in the Sahara is comparable to London prices, and we were lucky we took a bottle of water else we would have had nothing to drink.
6. You will be having an early rise on the first day, followed by about 4-5 hours sleep the night in the sahara, you will have no ACTUAL leisure time in the Sahara, although the sunset/sunrise is beautiful.
7. The tour guide will bully you into going on the camel ride, and exclaim about getting photos all together. No photo materialised although they charged for single photos as EXTRA.
8. You will be given the same food for almost every meal which is disgusting considering the amount you pay, it is not nutritious and if you go I suggest you take some vitamin tablets, or some healthy food.

* Although this isn't really a holiday flaw, it was my girlfriends birthday the day we went on the trip, and we intended on getting a bottle of wine under the sunset in the sahara, but because of the poor guide instructions and extortionate prices at the camp, we had to share half a bottle of water between us, and horrible stomach aches (Which we found when we got home was a bacterial stomach infection from people not washing salad with sterile water) Mmmmm!

Here is what is wrong with Thomson's boat excursion we went on during our holiday in Tunisia, we only went on trips to get away from our disgusting hotel, The Marhaba "Palace":

1. The trip last 1 hour, not 3 hours as the brochure says.
2. The brochure says free drinks during the entire trip, we got 1 small plastic beaker of coke or fanta.
3. Don't expect to be able to stop off and jump into the see for a snorkle as the brochure says, the boat will not stop.
4. Although I know the Thomson boat excursion can not guarantee dolphin sitings during the trip, I spoke to some people who had tripped to the resort several times (God knows why!) and they said the dolphins only visit that part of the coast about 2-3 weeks of the year.

Well there are the 2 excursions, we wanted to do more but quite frankly we are glad we didn't the Thomson representative will dance around the bad parts of the trip, and constantly say it musn't be missed. The whole thing is poorly ran and of even worse quality, I genuinely hope people visit this page or my other Thomson holiday review so they don't go on this holiday, and definately not this resort or with Thomson. I can see how the idea behind it all could be good in thought, but it has been actioned poorly. Everyone I spoke to on the trip was not happy with the money they had spent, and the amount of tipping they were expected to do.

Please, if you feel the same way as I do about any Thomson holiday you have experienced, then please let me know either by contacting me or by leaving a comment below.