Help with evening clothes for Mekong cruise

[margbem]

We are experienced ocean cruisers and generally like to dress up for dinner. However, we are doing a 19 night land and river trip with APT in February and have only one 20kg hold case and a small carry on handbag as there are some internal flights within Vietnam. I seem to remember reading on here that generally people do not dress up in the evenings.

 

What does anyone recommend we take in the way of clothes, bearing in mind it's going to be very hot on land during the day, and that also we are staying in 5* hotels for the land part of the trip and eating in the restaurants in those hotels.

 

Help!!!

[ljandgb]

We're doing a Mekong cruise next month.  I don't dress super formal at home, and rarely wear skirts anyways, but my plan is a wardrobe of simple trousers, light weight technical fabric solid color shirts, and a nice scarf or necklace to dress it up.  In the past, when cruising in hot climates, I generally come back from excursions, shower, and put on tomorrow's clothes for dinner that night.

 

In general, river cruises are more smart casual.  At least the European ones I've been on.

[Kristelle]

I have gone on Europe river cruise and planning to go on Mekong river cruise next - have read up lots on all sorts of details including dress code.

 

Dress code is stated as smart casual - so I would do similar to ljandgb and if I changed from my day clothes I would usually put on tomorrows clothes to wear to dinner - or if I thought they were too casual, I might have a dressier top for the evening.

On my Europe cruise, the weather was warm - not as warm as Mekong, but short sleeves/shorts weather.

On ordinary nights there were men wearing shorts at dinner - not skimpy gym shorts, of course, but smartish cargo type, almost to knee length ones

I read beforehand that jeans at dinner were a faux pas - reality was different, not unusual at all to see people in jeans at dinner.

There were a couple of nights when people dressed bit more formally - captains welcome/farewell gala dinners and night out to a concert.

Women wore nice dresses or pants with dressy tops (cooler in evenings in Europe, in Vietnam/Cambodia I might wear 3/4 pants with dressy top for suchlike) Men wore pants and smart collared shirts, with or without jackets. A few wore ties at these events (nobody wore them every evening) but they were minority.

 

I would expect Mekong river cruise to be similar sort of dress standards.

 

 

 

[Bill Y]

On 10/12/2023 at 12:22 PM, margbem said:

We are experienced ocean cruisers and generally like to dress up for dinner. However, we are doing a 19 night land and river trip with APT in February and have only one 20kg hold case and a small carry on handbag as there are some internal flights within Vietnam. I seem to remember reading on here that generally people do not dress up in the evenings.

 

What does anyone recommend we take in the way of clothes, bearing in mind it's going to be very hot on land during the day, and that also we are staying in 5* hotels for the land part of the trip and eating in the restaurants in those hotels.

 

Help!!!

Unlike ocean cruises where most lines have formal nights with dress codes, river cruise do not have formal nights so there is no requirement for dinner suits and bow ties, not even suits. As has already been mentioned for European river cruises the far east is no different. I have taken a tie but not felt the need to wear it, a collared shirt was quite acceptable for welcome aboard and farewell events.

 

We went on a similar trip in 2019 with APT’s sister brand. We had an internal flight with a 20Kg limit on hold luggage per person which we found was adequate as there were no heavy or dress clothes with shoes. Also we were told to pack down to an overnight bag for our two nights on Halong bay and cases would remain in Hanoi, we were going to utilise our cabin (aircraft) trolley bags but in the end were told as we were now going on a smaller junk there was more room so the cases would go on as well.

 

I hope you enjoy your holiday, we found Vietnam and Cambodia fascinating.

[iana1212]

Just back from a Mekong cruise. Dinner was very informal, much more than most ocean cruises, and no need for anything more than smart casual. Never saw anyone wear a tie. There were a couple of ‘special’ nights where people were a bit smarter but really no more than a collared shirt for men or a nice top for women, a few wore dresses.

Edited October 13, 2023 by iana1212
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