HK, Sanya, Nha Trang, HCMC, Singapore advice

Hi,

I have booked my wife, her mother and myself for the October 11th 7 night Asia sailing on RC Voyager and I am becoming a little nervous - I am having a bit of a harder time than usual finding good feedback on things to do and see and excursions in the ports we will be visiting.

Mother-in-law is 86 years old so activity cannot be too vigorous, what might be good activities and excursions in each of these ports. We are more culture and scenery than shopping or museums. I think I would like to do the Mekong and floating market in HCMC, what do those who have been think?

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Dave

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Well if you search threads on this forum you should find a lot of information and recommendations for tours, things to see, pitfalls etc.

If on the Voyager and going to Saigon you will dock at Phu My, a good one hour out of Saigon and too far for one day visit to the Mekong and any floating markets that are in the delta (they start early and finish early in the day).

Saigon is well worth a day visit but for much less travel etc consider Vung Tau, nice seaside city (beaches are not flash) but quite a lot to see and leave time for a nice seafood lunch somewhere.

This group who I have used (longtannuidattour.com) can arrange a tour to meet any of your needs, will have an Australian Vietnam Vet come along with you and will meet you outside the port gate to avoid the $25 per head charge the port authorities will extort from you to let the van pick you up shipside.

We used them in 2014 for a group of 8 - $50 USD per head for a full day which included aircon van, water, entrance fees. Lunch was $12 per head including beers and soft drinks and food to die for.

Prices may have gone up a little since then but all monies from the tours go to charities the group supports in the local area.

If you go to your roll call on Cruise Critics you may also find others organising private tours that you can join or perhaps you can organise one and ask other to join you to defray the costs.

I live in Singapore, we go to HK quite often and we have visited all the ports that your cruise will be covering, albeit on different cruises.

I remember for Sanya (Hainan Island), we took a ship's tour. This was a few years ago. Reason was that at we couldn't find any reliable private tour operators. Our ship's tour brought us to various interesting places in Sanya. Not much walking on that tour, but we had to put up with large coaches, 40+ pax. Well, you won't miss the ship with a ship's tour.

For HCMC, refer to this for what we did. The port is rather far from HCMC. But we found a well reviewed private tour operator, so we went with a private tour.

http://guitar123foodandtravel.blogspot.sg/2013/10/ho-chi-minh-city-lets-pay-uncle-ho.html

For Nha Trang, I recall this was a tender port, so getting off the ship was a bit more tricky. In our case, we also got a private tour from Nha Trang. I didn't blog about this as it was a bit too long ago.

Plenty to do in HK and Singapore. But plenty has been said and written too. Just let me know if you need more info on either of these two cities.