live from Millennium - Asia

[weliketocruise86]

No problem with the passport. We did a 2 day tour organised by someone on our rollcall. Tong was the tour operator. We stayed overnight at the Pathewan Princess hotel which was lovely although we were not there long enough to really enjoy it. We had vans which each took 4 couples and they were probably the best transport we used in the whole trip. We had a great guide. She really looked after us. Constantly handing out cold water and icy towels. It was very tiring but we packed a lot into those 2 days and enjoyed every minute.

 

Thanks Sandancer, we are with Tong too. We are doing the city tour staying overnight and then visiting the floating & train markets.

What tour did you take, can you recall the time you arrived at your hotel ?

[sandancer]

Your tour sounds exactly the same as ours. We arrived at the hotel(I think) at about 7.30pm. You will not believe those 2 markets. Make sure you breathe in as the train passes. You may have all of 4 inches between your chest and the train. As for the floating market, think M25 of the waterways!!! The best fun we've had for years.

[tampadee]

I did not book our tours but participated and our very excellent tour company was Best Cruises. They are based in Halong Bay and Stefan was excellent in arranging the tours. We booked 1/2 day bay cruise and 1 full day Hanoi. We also used him for 2 days in Saigon. Our guides were all very good, spoke excellent English and the restaurants they booked for us were top notch. Some in our group had dietary restrictions and they were handled extremely well. Hanoi was a long day, but our guide made it very worthwhile and we were glad we went. Can't imagine going all that way and not seeing Hanoi.

 

Did you book your own hotel? If so, how did you know which to book?

[ghstudio]

There are many sources for hotel reservations....there are many hotel recommendations. Our guide gave us a suggestion of four hotels in each city..we chose the Duxton in Saigon and the Hilton in Hanoi.

 

We checked them out and chose between the suggested hotels using trip advisor and other comments. The Duxton is right on a main street very easy to walk around in the evening or get dinner. The Hilton is in a very nice (expensive) neighborhood and pretty much requires a taxi to get anywhere. I'd recommend the Duxton....not the Hilton. Both are five star hotels. Others chose less expensive hotels on their tours.

 

We used Smile Travel....very pleased with their guides and service.

Edited March 3, 2013 by ghstudio

[cheffip]

Smile Tours booked our halong bay cruise. In our case, they sent a van and guide from Hanoi to take us to the boat...but that was because we were going to Hanoi with them after the boat trip. They probably have someone local in the halong bay area who could just get you to the boat, get you on the right boat (not so simple),etc. They are reputable, so it's worth asking. You probably want a private boat with lunch rather than joining some other group...I don't think it costs very much more.

 

We are also taking the northbound cruise later this year and our group has booked with Smile to go into Hanoi on Day 2. I was wondering about your experience with getting off the ship for the Halong Bay cruise with Smile. Were you able to get off quickly or did you have to wait for the ship's tours to go first? Also, how much time did you have on your tour and do you think you saw anything different from those who took the ship's tour of Halong Bay?

[weliketocruise86]

Does anyone recall where the connections party was held and at what time ? I presume it will be held on the first sea day. We have 126 registered.

Thanks

Edited March 5, 2013 by weliketocruise86

[ghstudio]

We are also taking the northbound cruise later this year and our group has booked with Smile to go into Hanoi on Day 2. I was wondering about your experience with getting off the ship for the Halong Bay cruise with Smile. Were you able to get off quickly or did you have to wait for the ship's tours to go first? Also, how much time did you have on your tour and do you think you saw anything different from those who took the ship's tour of Halong Bay?

 

The four individuals on our tour all had priority tendering so we were off on the very first tender....I can't speak to regular tendering which normally waits for the ship's tours to tender. As it was, we had to wait for 30-45 minutes at the Halong Bay terminal for our boat.

 

We had about 4 hours on the boat...a private boat for just the 4 of us..and they served a wonderful lunch. The boat did not sink...it didn't look any worse than any other boat which isn't saying much. We chose not to see the cave...just too many ships and people...so we cruised around which is what we cared about. We certainly could have stopped there, had we wanted to..it was on our itinerary, but being in a small group, we had the luxury of deciding what we wanted to do. The cruise is scenic...and it's incredibly beautiful.

 

I would not recommend that anyone do Hanoi in a day....it's a 3+ hour drive to/from the ship. I suggest you do what we did and go to Hanoi the first evening after the boat ride....spend the extra $100-150 for a room at a hotel and save your body (I know, I'm spending your money).

Edited March 5, 2013 by ghstudio

[emileg]

Does anyone recall where the connections party was held and at what time ? I presume it will be held on the first sea day. We have 126 registered.

Thanks

The Connections Party for our February 3 cruise was held on the first full sea day at 10:30 in the morning. This does not mean that yours will be held at the same time. Sounds like you have a very active roll call. When is your sailing?

[weliketocruise86]

The Connections Party for our February 3 cruise was held on the first full sea day at 10:30 in the morning. This does not mean that yours will be held at the same time. Sounds like you have a very active roll call. When is your sailing?

 

17th March, 10 more sleeps until we leave for Hong Kong :D

[TeaBag]

Lucky you. We have 34.

[WhitsEnd]

I was on the February 17 sailing and I believe ours was held at the same time (first full day at sea at 10:30) in the Rendezvous Lounge.

 

The Connections Party for our February 3 cruise was held on the first full sea day at 10:30 in the morning. This does not mean that yours will be held at the same time. Sounds like you have a very active roll call. When is your sailing?

[WhitsEnd]

I did not have priority tender.

 

We arranged for our boat cruise to start at 8 AM. We waited only a few minutes for the tender, and the tendering itself took approximately 20 minutes.

 

Your tour guide/operator should be waiting for you on the dock where the tender arrives. He/she will see the cruise ship and will know that you are coming. He/she will wait. There are many, many tour operators there waiting for pre-arranged tours, and others just waiting, hoping to snag someone who wants a last minute junk tour.

 

There are TONS of junk boats going out and plenty of time... especially if you intend to do a full day cruise. If, like ghstudio, you choose to do a 4 hour morning cruise and transfer to Hanoi in the afternoon, time will be a little bit tighter... but not problematic.

 

I worried a LOT about all of these different things in preparation for our trip, and in the end, none of the worry was worth it.

 

If you are still looking for tours in Halong Bay or elsewhere in Vietnam or Cambodia, I recommend Best Cruises with Stefan. He was wonderful.

 

 

The four individuals on our tour all had priority tendering so we were off on the very first tender....I can't speak to regular tendering which normally waits for the ship's tours to tender. As it was, we had to wait for 30-45 minutes at the Halong Bay terminal for our boat.

 

We had about 4 hours on the boat...a private boat for just the 4 of us..and they served a wonderful lunch. The boat did not sink...it didn't look any worse than any other boat which isn't saying much. We chose not to see the cave...just too many ships and people...so we cruised around which is what we cared about. We certainly could have stopped there, had we wanted to..it was on our itinerary, but being in a small group, we had the luxury of deciding what we wanted to do. The cruise is scenic...and it's incredibly beautiful.

 

I would not recommend that anyone do Hanoi in a day....it's a 3+ hour drive to/from the ship. I suggest you do what we did and go to Hanoi the first evening after the boat ride....spend the extra $100-150 for a room at a hotel and save your body (I know, I'm spending your money).

[WhitsEnd]

Stefan can recommend some great hotels.... we really enjoyed him.

 

We did not book our hotels through any tour company. We booked them on our own. We booked the Essence Hanoi in Hanoi web: http://www.essencehanoihotel.com/ and the Caravelle Hotel in Saigon web: http://www.caravellehotel.com/.

The Essence Hanoi is a smaller operation; very intimate and friendly. A wonderful ginger tea welcome. A beautiful breakfast included. True service. And a great price.

The Caravelle Hotel offers a wonderful senior rate that we took advantage of. The room (on the 8th floor city view) was magnificent. The pool so refreshing! And breakfast an awesome spread.

We absolutely loved both and would stay at both again. Good luck!

 

Did you book your own hotel? If so, how did you know which to book?

[WhitsEnd]

No problem at all!

You are requested to inform them of your plans before arriving in port so that they can have your passports ready for you at the Rendezvous Lounge for pick up. Some folks (even in our tour) didn't notify them of their plans and so they had to wait a few minutes, but I didn't see anything bad or anyone waiting over 15 minutes. No major delay.

 

How was Bangkok ? Any delays getting your passports back and leaving the ship ?

[WhitsEnd]

That is a great price - the best I have seen!

 

For 10 people, we paid $78 pp for the full day including a seafood lunch. With Best Cruises.

 

I booked our full day cruise with Buffalo Tours. We did not go to Hanoi. The guide met us at the tender port and took us by bus to the junk. We had a junk which took 32 but we were only 14 people so plenty of room. We paid $55 pp for the full day including a seafood lunch. Our guide was excellent and I have no problem with recommending this operator.

[WhitsEnd]

Which means you still have time to consider flying to Cambodia...... we did and were SO happy we made the choice to do so. It was not terribly expensive and we felt that the different itinerary really made our trip.

We did a full day Halong Bay cruise (Best Cruises)

Then drove to Hanoi the following morning (arranged through the hotel)

Spent the afternoon and overnighted in Hanoi (Hanoi Essence)

Flew to Siem Reap the following day (Vietnam Airlines)

Had 3 days and 2 nights in Cambodia (saw all of the temples from the Pavilion Indochine)

Flew to Saigon (Vietnam Airlines)

Spent a night in Saigon (Caravelle Hotel)

Transferred back to the ship (using the ships "On your own" transfer)

It was amazing.

 

Lucky you. We have 34.

[ghstudio]

If, like ghstudio, you choose to do a 4 hour morning cruise and transfer to Hanoi in the afternoon, time will be a little bit tighter... but not problematic.

 

 

On our cruise, we arrived in Halong Bay at 1PM so we had 1/2 a day followed by a full day in port. We did our boat trip starting at 2PM the first day and then drove to Hanoi that night....leaving the whole next day for sightseeing. Of course whole day means the part of the day before the 4 hour drive back to the ship. We really had from 8:30am-2pm to visit hanoi. Had we tried to do it in one day, we would have had to leave at 6am (isn't going to happen) and make the 4 hour drive to Hanoi for 4 hours of sightseeing. That's just not worth it...8 hours on a bus for 4 hours of sightseeing.

 

Of course the drive can be a little less time...it's traffic dependent...but it will be at least 3 hours.

[cheffip]

On our cruise, we arrived in Halong Bay at 1PM so we had 1/2 a day followed by a full day in port. We did our boat trip starting at 2PM the first day and then drove to Hanoi that night....leaving the whole next day for sightseeing. Of course whole day means the part of the day before the 4 hour drive back to the ship. We really had from 8:30am-2pm to visit hanoi. Had we tried to do it in one day, we would have had to leave at 6am (isn't going to happen) and make the 4 hour drive to Hanoi for 4 hours of sightseeing. That's just not worth it...8 hours on a bus for 4 hours of sightseeing.

 

Of course the drive can be a little less time...it's traffic dependent...but it will be at least 3 hours.

 

Just wondering why you had to head back at 2 pm? I notice our departure is 10 pm so I would think leaving Hanoi at 4 or 4:30 pm would leave enough time even with four hours of driving.

[ghstudio]

Just wondering why you had to head back at 2 pm? I notice our departure is 10 pm so I would think leaving Hanoi at 4 or 4:30 pm would leave enough time even with four hours of driving.

 

If the ship leaves at 10 and it may take 4 plus hours to get back, you probably should leave no later than 4pm. We had allocated time for shopping but because it was Tet when we were there, stores were closed....and we had seen the sites we wanted to see...skipping a few because, again it was Tet, so many religious sites were just mobbed with people, filled with incense smoke, etc. The ship's tours didn't have the same flexibility...again this is why we do private tours. We decided to leave Hanoi a bit earlier than we needed. That doesn't change my view of doing 8 hours of driving in any vehicle in one day on the roads (and I'm using the term very loosely) around Hanoi. Near as I can tell, they also replace shocks in their vehicles with solid steel rods..and we were in a newer van.

Edited March 6, 2013 by ghstudio

[tomtnt]

That is a great price - the best I have seen!

 

For 10 people, we paid $78 pp for the full day including a seafood lunch. With Best Cruises.

 

Just to reiterate WhitsEnd review regarding Stephen and bestcruises. I posted this on another thread:

 

We just returned from the 2/15 sailing and booked our Halong and Saigon excursion through Stephen for our group of 10. At Halong, Stephen's tour guide was about 30 minutes late showing up, but when he arrived, we had a great time. He was very knowledgeable, spoke perfect English, and willing to take us wherever we wanted including lunch at a local "bun cha" place in Halong town. The junk to the fishing village and school was also unforgettable - it was a remote village and no one was there except for us. Passing out pencils to the school kids was an experience my children will never forget.

 

In Saigon, Stephen (he's based in Halong but has connection throughout the country) set us up with a local tour guide from Saigon - our Saigon tour guide was hands-down, our best guide for the entire trip. He went out of his way to arrange EVERYTHING. Any restaurants we wanted to try, he would call ahead and make arrangements to insure we were able to be seated immediately. We wanted to make some suits and vietnamese dresses - so he called up a seamstress who met us at a restaurant to take our measurements. She met us at our hotel the following morning for the fitting and then met us at a second hotel later on in the day to deliver the suits and dresses.

 

The only issues I had with Stephen were: he did not arrange the port permit in Saigon which meant we had to walk outside the port to meet our driver and guide (15 minutes). We booked a combo Halong + Saigon tour and he insisted that we pay in full at the end of Halong (rather than paying for the Saigon tour in Saigon). But all-in-all, a great experience.

 

Lastly, if you can, consider bringing an unlocked android or iphone - sim cards with unlimited data are literally $5-10 at each port of call and are invaluable. They allow you to call your tour operator if they are late or if you are delayed and you can surf the web to research restaurants etc.

 

I will post a full review of our trip shortly. We had a great time and miss our time in South East Asia. Still recovering from some immense jet lag!

[ghstudio]

 

Lastly, if you can, consider bringing an unlocked android or iphone - sim cards with unlimited data are literally $5-10 at each port of call and are invaluable. They allow you to call your tour operator if they are late or if you are delayed and you can surf the web to research restaurants etc.

 

If you do bring a phone, make sure it's a GSM phone (ATT or T-mobile in the US)....an unlocked verizon or sprint phone will not work.

[tiggerman101]

I am on the Millennium right now, but at a hotel in Bangkok. The Connections party was held on the first sea day at 10:30 AM in Michael's Club. The Captain and Hotel Director both attended.

 

As for the passports and Bangkok....we were notified we could pick them up between 7:30 and 9 the morning we arrived. We went right at 7:30 and they were available. Easy. The ship arrived in Bangkok at 10AM as planned, but it di take awhile to get cleared. It was not really an issue.

 

If you are starting in Singapore, remember to keep your landing card that they give you at the airport. They need it to put in your passport for the Singapore officials that check them when the ship leaves.

 

Overall, great cruise so far and really enjoying the ship. Then again, we are pretty easy to please.

[FSL009]

Yeah I took the Millennium tour for the night in Bangkok without their hotel.

 

When I pre-booked it the internet said 10am departure. it was in fact 12noon before we got going which was a huge issue for me as I was meeting a friend in Bangkok.

 

pretty much every time I look at something printed the time changes.

 

Anyway Bangkok is awesome and completely insane. traffic was terrible, I stayed in the Aloft in Soi 11, which is a great cheaper hotel very nice. its a bit of an enteraintment soi and was great fun.

 

On boat, food has been really good for the most part. the waiters struggle with drinks in the dinners, but then it is pretty busy. generally anywhere there is never enough waiters, so have started just sitting at bars and ordering that way.

 

the drinks package is dangerous, I have pretty much got on the turps every night. So good from a cost point of view.

 

I think overall it has been enjoyable for the first four days, but another week and a half might be a bit testing. will enjoy the port days I think.

[travelstamp]

Have been reading all of your wonderful reviews. We are making plans to take this cruise next February. If anyone would like to summarize at the end of the cruise their do's and don't do's, and recommendations, that would be great. Please feel free to send a direct e-mail to me at jlspray@comcast.net. Thank you in advance for your input.

[relo]

Hi,

 

First of all, thanks for all the information. We will do March 31 cruise from Singapore to Hong Kong and can really use a lot of the tips for our cruise.

 

I still have a question left, namely where is the port for Saigon. The itinerary says Phu My and I thought that means the port near Vung Tao (2 hours from Saigon). But I know hear also about a port called Phu My port district 7 and almost in the city itself.

 

Can somebody who already did the cruise please clarify is for me.

 

Thanks

Edited March 7, 2013 by relo