Vietnam tour - odyssey unlimited vs road scholar vs ???

I have used both of those companies, but mostly in North America. I have also done quite a few Rick Steves tours. I think OU is the closest to Rick Steve's in quality of guide and itinerary. The Road Scholar tours I have done varied a lot. Perhaps people who have gone to SE Asia with RoadScholar will be able to comment on the quality of the local group that runs their tours.

I have not been to Vietnam yet. If you are looking for other small group tour companies that tour Vietnam, you may want to check out Gate 1 Discovery Tour (22 people maximum). I’ve done Gate 1 tours elsewhere and they were great.

https://www.gate1travel.com/tour/small-groups-vietnam-14dctrevn27.aspx?Brand=DISCOVER&?Brand=GATE1

Another tour company to explore is Inspiring Vacations out of Australia. I did a Japan tour with them and was pleased.

https://www.inspiringvacations.com/us/vietnam-tours?srsltid=AfmBOor75O0I6dfQL2MSoVOlPk6YKIku71qUZX20P5s5YIWkXf6NFj5Q

For reference, I’ve done 5 RS Europe tours as well. I would travel with any of these three companies again.

I have taken 4 RS tours and more recently used Intrepid (for Morocco) and Odysseys Unlimited (Patagonia). Both were excellent in every way, including fantastic guides and tour leaders. The hotels (caveat: I chose their premium level) were nicer than the RS hotels. I'm confident choosing either, now, based on itinerary, and am using Intrepid again for (hopefully) Jordan and Egypt in January 2027.
Others here have also favorably reviewed OAT and Gate 1, if you want yet more to compare! Scotland was gorgeous and I loved it, but the tour aspect there with Gate1 was not. (Mine might have been an anomaly, but the tour leader was pretty awful and the local guides, while competent, were only for very brief periods.) The hotels were also fancy, though and many people talked about the value for the money being a big plus.
None of this helps with your Vietnam/Cambodia question but I am looking at both Intrepid and Odysseys Unlimited for my future trip to SE Asia. Most tour members, both companies, show the same loyalty as RS fans!
As for Road Scholar, I used them for Cuba many years ago. They don't have their own guides so I think your experience may depend on who you end up with?
What a great adventure!

Have you considered a river cruise? I took a river cruise with AmaWaterways in January this year, with the pre and post excursions, which included Cambodia. The Cambodia portion was my favorite. It was a wonderful cruise.

We used Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) in November 2024, our second tour with them, after an African safari trip in 2022. They’d put the trip on sale, so the price was right, and their trips all take no more than 16 people. We had 13. The itinerary was actually good - start in Hanoi, then work your way south to Saigon, with interesting and historic sights along the way. An optional post-trip extension to Cambodia was offered, but we arranged our own Cambodia trip, to Angkor Wat and nearby, arranged thru Little Vietnam. I’d recommend Little Vietnam, which has shorter or longer trip offerings, and can help design a customized trip for Cambodia and/or Vietnam.

OAT includes wonderful home-hosted dinners with a local family, and both the Africa and Vietnam trips were excellent on paper. The guide makes a difference, though, and ours in Vietnam made it a less fabulous experience. As one of the other tour members said to me, “He has his favorites.” She and her husband, and I and mine, weren’t among them, and he ignored some of our attempts to get accurate information, and left us in a few binds. Drinking “bia,” beer, is a big aspect of life for lots of Vietnamese, and that seemed to be the main focus of his day, catering to those on the tour who wanted to join him at a sidewalk table for pitchers of bia when we weren’t on a boat or bus, or at a sight. Or the wealthier folks (big tippers?) who wanted to do lots of shopping, got his attention. And his English was often hard to understand. It was certainly a lot better than my Vietnamese, but I wasn’t being paid to explain Vietnamese culture/history/sights. He proudly said he’d been doing this for eight years, but I wonder whether his communication improved over that time. He made frequent, disparaging, sexist remarks, and when we tried to share that American didn’t find them appropriate, he dismissed that as inconsequential. At lunch one day (several lunches and dinners were group affairs), he took the shrimp sauce off of our table and walked it to a table where he sat by himself. I went over and asked if I could please get it back at some point, and he said, “No, White people don’t like this.” I was able to eventually get the jar back, and the condiment was delicious. It was just another inappropriate remark, which clearly weren’t getting tempered after guiding for eight years. I gave feedback to OAT afterwards, and the office didn’t even acknowledge getting my trip review, let alone suggest that they would look into the matter.

It was discouraging at several sights to hear other groups’ guides speaking clear English, providing information to their clients. As our group was departing the historic Post Office in Saigon, I spotted a man in an OAT guide polo shirt some distance away, and would’ve liked to have talked with him for even 30 seconds to see how he spoke and to get a sense of his competence, but we were getting led away quickly and I couldn’t go in the opposite direction to see if he’d have been a better guide. OAT does two different trips that include Vietnam. With a good guide, ours could’ve been much better.

I just did Inside Vietnam with OAT. We had 14 in our group and a fantastic guide. Highly recommend OAT. Hotels were all very good.

I’ve done 13 Road Scholar programs (8 Europe/5 US activity based) and 11 Rick Steves tours. I’ve not done any in SE Asia. I choose based on the itinerary now. The biggest difference I see is that some of the Road Scholar parts are slightly less independent than Rick Steves travelers. This may not hold true for SE Asia as it’s a bit more of a leap to get to than Europe.

I agree that the guide will be pivotal to the experience no matter which company.

There are a couple of FB pages I’m on for Road Scholar so I’d recommend asking about Vietnam tours on them. The 2 I’m on are Friends of Road Scholar and Women of Road Scholar.

We did an Intrepid Tour of Vietnam and Cambodia in 2016 and it was great.