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Bear with me, I know this review is long but it is worth the read.

In theory, this trip really does seem lovely. You get to make new friends, see new places, have the safety net of a program with instructors to guide you. In reality, it is the absolute opposite. I went in the fall of 2019 on the Southeast Asia trip. I was BEYOND excited when I was preparing for the trip all the way through the 24 hours of flying. So beyond the price tag(12k+ could last you a whole year easily in Asia, most people don't understand how severely overpriced this trip was, even I didn't till I was there), what could be so wrong with this seemingly amazing trip?

The amount of freedom you get is virtually zero, you always have to have someone with you. It is not about not being allowed to drink or have sex, it is that you are constantly being watched, where you are, and what you are doing. As young adults, you will be treated like toddlers. The instructors that led my trip were incredibly unprepared, Pacific Discovery put two leaders together who had never led a trip. There was so much drama between everyone it was sickening, we had all graduated high school and some were in college yet some acted like petty middle schoolers, no action was taken against them. The time I enjoyed the most was when we were not doing anything in particular, and that was RARE. We barely got any free time whatsoever, you were not allowed to tap out of activities that went against what I was told when I signed up.

The elephants, that is what I was really looking forward to when I signed up, as a lot of people are. It is not what they advertised it to be, it is all volunteer work meaning scooping feces, cleaning their water bowls, etc etc. You do not get to bathe them or really hang out with them at all, the food is very good though I’ll give them that. This is just one example of the misleading information they put on their site.

Food, you would not think it to be such a huge issue on the trip but it was. For how much money you put into the trip, you got so little money for food I was always hungry. You were not allowed to use your own money in addition to the budget as it became “too complicated for them”. I was never able to even afford a drink with my meal, let alone enough to feed myself properly.
Now the big issue that sent me over the edge, being removed from the program only a month or so in. I was also not the only one, there were several others on my trip for various reasons. They mentioned constantly that they will support you if you struggle mentally, that it’s hard on everyone. That simply is not the case, they will just kick you off if they do not want to deal with you. In my case, I did struggle mentally during the program. It really is a lot to take in and to deal with. After getting in trouble for breaking a rule, which I signed a slip saying I would not do it again, I cried a lot. We had a few days in Vietnam free so I spent those days mostly in my room because yeah, I was really sad. Pacific told other parents and their kids that I had decided to leave which was so far from the truth it was almost comical. I reached out several times to either resolve this issue emotionally or financially after the trip and they did not respond for months, when they finally did respond they just said no, they wanted nothing to do with me as I was now just a liability as I apparently was before.

Overall, just do not go on this trip. You would have much better luck just going by yourself or finding another tour group.