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bleacher04

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About Me

  • Location
    Ontario, Canada
  • Interests
    wine, music, skiing, hiking
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    HAL
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    SE Asia, South America

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Cool Cruiser (2/15)

  1. Sorry to hear that. Was it a cruise, and if so, which line?
  2. Thanks @RobInMN and @CastleCritic for your helpful comments! I will read your reviews to double-check the excursions that we've selected.
  3. Thanks @Host Jazzbeau And I already know you are correct on your comments; on our first river cruise we started looking forward to any down time that came our way (including the very exciting "getting stuck on a sandbar"). And we met and connected with more great people on that cruise than we ever have on a larger sea-going cruise ship.
  4. Greetings all! My wife and I will be taking our second river cruise next month (April), on the AmaVerde from Bucharest (Giurgiu) Romania to Budapest ("Gems of Southeast Europe"). Our first river cruise was on the Mekong in December (fantastic and highly recommended), and so realizing that things might be a little different on the Danube, we have a few questions for you more experienced river cruisers: 1) Tour Guides: On the Mekong, we kept the same three Vietnamese guides for the first 5 days (land+river), swapping for three new Cambodian guides for the second half (again, land+river). Will that be true on this cruise, or will we have new local guides each day for each different country? We are doing a 4-day pre-cruise land tour with Ama in Romania, so this questions extends to this portion & these guides too. 2) Currencies: Ama's tipping guidelines for this cruise are in euros, but only one of the five countries we will be visiting actually uses the euro as official currency. I'm not about to get currencies for countries we will only visit for one day, but four days in Romania suggests it might be wise to acquire some leu (or lei?). Any thoughts/comments? 3) It looks like our itinerary is a lot less "packed" then on the Mekong -- there are some days when we only have a morning excursion, or only an afternoon tour. Are we sailing during these non-tour mornings & afternoons? Or are we docked and can go explore / shop on our own? On our first cruise we could only disembark on our own when docked overnight in Phnom Penh. Thanks in advance for everyone's assistance!
  5. Thanks. And I updated the sharing access for my link, that should work now too.
  6. Egyptian Visa Application Form Okay, I have uploaded the file to my Google Drive, and here is the link. Hopefully this works: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HsLlV2G7cFyy0g9D7d3GxtNYuyu5fPgJ/view?usp=drive_link Note that this form is labelled as being for the consulate in Montreal. Presumably the form for the embassy is the same -- geez I hope so -- with a different header. Post #28 shows the instructions.
  7. Sorry, I'm not sure how to post PDF's on CC. I've deleted it from post #28 and will re-post when I figure that out.
  8. We emailed the consulate in Montreal and received the attached documents. Where you apply (in person or by mail) depends on where in Canada you live. The other thing we learned is that visas are only good for 90 days from the date of issue, so you can't get them too far in advance.
  9. We arrived one day early and had booked an extra night at the hotel (so three days total). We landed around midnight and just took a taxi from the airport. There was a taxi desk just as you exit the luggage area, we paid by credit card (around USD $20 as I recall), and then a woman from the taxi desk escorted us outside to the taxi stand and to our cab and told the driver where to go. Grab (SE Asia’s Uber) might have been cheaper but this was clean and painless and easy. AmaWaterways will have desk set up in the lobby of the hotel. If it is manned you can register any time — it’s really just checking off your names and giving you luggage tags with your cabin number and coloured ribbons for your luggage (this colour is your group, at least for your time in Saigon and your bus ride to the ship). They can also provide suggestions for exploring and restaurants. An info brochure from AmaWaterways was provided to us by the hotel when we checked in. If you’re staying at the Sofitel Saigon Plaza, then the old Post Office and the Notre Dame church are within easy (< 10 minutes) walking distance (although Notre Dame is still covered in scaffolding). You will go there briefly as part of the Day 1 tour but you may wish to explore on your own — the PO is a weird combination of colonial history on the walls surrounded by jewellery and souvenirs. Between the Sofitel and the church/PO is a charming little pedestrian alley that’s mainly devoted to bookstores (and coffee shops). And there’s a long concrete park near the city hall (?) with a large statue of Uncle Ho; you can walk down to the river and then take another street back to the hotel.
  10. IMO (and limited experience) it’s way easier to meet people on a river cruise than on a big cruise ship. The lounge and the dining room are set up to encourage mixing (although there are some tables for two if you’re so inclined). Two of the couples that we spent a lot of time with we met on the pre-cruise leg in Saigon, and another couple just sat with us for drinks before dinner and we hit it off. And then you just meet people randomly on tours or just chatting on the top deck. You will love it, it was a fantastic experience.
  11. Part 2: Some Tips It was really, really hot, and very humid. We’d been to SE Asia at this time of year before, and it seemed hotter this time. We were constantly washing dri-fit shirts and underwear and stringing them around our cabin. The ship provided cold bottles of water each time we were disembarking for a tour, and the buses always had coolers of water too. AMA also provided water bottle carriers. We went through a lot of water every day. Bringing a stack of crisp US $1 bills was the best advice I got from the people on this forum (thanks @gnome12 and @franski). And $5’s too. Most people tipped guides and drivers during the cruise, even though AMA said that gratuities were included for the river cruise portion. And we bought lots of scarves and rattan mats using cash, and cold beers for $1. Did I mention that it was really, really hot? We brought old shoes in case of mud but never needed them; it had dried up considerably in the short time since @hoosier2017 took their cruise (and the water level had dropped a lot too, according to one of the bartenders). We never unpacked our raincoats. We only had two major rainfalls, one in the evening and one during a temple tour. AMA provides umbrellas and cheap plastic rain ponchos, and the hotels also provided umbrellas. Electrical: The AmaDara does indeed have 220V/50Hz outlets that accept both N. American and European plugs. As noted, most modern devices will convert as needed, but be careful if you have an old curling iron or something that is only 110/60. The Sofitel in Siam Reap had the same outlets. The Sofitel in Saigon had UK-style plugs, which was a surprise. Insects were not much of a problem. We applied a 30% DEET cream whenever we were in rural settings — the Cu Chi tunnels, the Killing Fields, rural villages where we walked on dirt paths, and the Angkor temples — and I don’t think we were bitten once. But we did get a couple of undetermined bites at the hotel in Siam Reap. My almost-knee-length shorts were quite acceptable for the Cambodian temples and holy places. As @franski mentioned, they seemed to be more concerned about bare shoulders. In some (but not all) cases, women were allowed to covered their shoulders with scarves. Dinner on board the AmaDara was very casual. The hotel manager only had one request, and that was that men wear long trousers to dinner. Finally, I want to thank everyone on this thread for all of your tips and advice!
  12. Long post so I am breaking it in two! Wow, what an experience! This was our first river cruise, and the trip up the Mekong was unlike anything we’ve done before. A lot of the excursions were in rural Vietnam and Cambodia, visiting villages with small markets and workshops and visiting people’s homes in the villages. A different side of travel, which we really enjoyed. Without exception, the crew on the AmaDara were fantastic. As others have already said, they really do go the extra mile to make your time aboard special and enjoyable. The local guides in Vietnam and Cambodia were also top-notch. I liked that they stayed with us for the duration of the time in their respective countries. The AmaDara itself was very nice, but by no means luxurious, compared for example to the boats from Scenic and ATP that we were docked alongside us in Phnom Penh. But it was certainly comfortable enough and I would not hesitate to recommend it. The food was always good but rarely great. Breakfast was buffet plus standard items that could be ordered from the menu. The coffee was terrible but you could get lattes, cappuccinos, etc. made to order. The lunch menu typically had 2-3 choices plus a sandwich of the day, with salads and soups and 1-2 appetizers at the buffet. A light lunch menu could be had from the bar on the top deck. The dinner menu typically had a couple of appetizers and soups, and three entrees to choose from. I would say that most of the dishes were either locally-inspired or Asian-western fusion. We ate at the specialty Chef’s Table restaurant one night — same fixed menu every night — and that dinner was excellent. Wine and beer flowed freely at lunch and dinner, but if you wanted a glass of wine before or after dinner that cost extra (whereas beer and local spirits were free all afternoon and evening). The complimentary house wines were decent quality, apparently not the same standard as on European cruises, but not so poor that we ever thought about buying the upcharge wines. The bar liquors were all Vietnamese; the gold rum was good enough to drink neat or on the rocks, and the gin was fine in a G&T. There was not a lot of choice on the tours, because most of the stops had only a limited selection of things to do. Really the only choice for tours was to choose an “active walking” tour or a more sedate and often shorter version of the same tour. We found the agenda very busy, with early starts and little downtime, but not so much that we ever elected to skip a tour. There just wasn’t much free time; no “sea days” like you’d typically have on a sea-going cruise. With the exception of Phnom Penh, where we were docked for 2 nights, we usually moored in the middle of the river overnight, and the boat would sail to a new destination during lunch and at dinnertime/evening. For excursions in Vietnam we were transferred from the ship to the shore using local tenders, in Phnom Penh we were docked as mentioned, and in the rest of Cambodia we just pulled up to the shore and disembarked via the gangplank. Fortunately it was no longer muddy as @hoosier2017 had described. Evening entertainment was definitely one of the weak points on this cruise; they had an on-board pianist most nights and did a crew talent show one night. The first night in Phnom Penh we sat on the upper deck and listened to the singer & guitarist from the Scenic boat next door, and the second night a group of us took a tuk-tuk tour around the city and to a rooftop bar for a nightcap. Our cruise had 77 passengers, well below the maximum capacity of 124. We were divided into three “families” in Saigon, but you could elect to join a different group (or sometimes had to due to the active vs. “gentle” excursions). I was told that the typical maximum number of passengers was around 100-110, because there are always a lot of singles. When the number is that high they split into four groups for tours. Organization was generally excellent Pre-cruise we spent three nights in Saigon, two with AMA and one extra. The Sofitel Saigon Plaza hotel was comfortable and well-located, and the breakfast was excellent. I can also recommend two restaurants nearby: Quan Nem (or just Nem) for lunch (5 minutes walk), and Propaganda for dinner (10 minutes walk). The excursions in Saigon were okay, but that was partly because we had been there before. On our fist evening we went off on our own on a scooter foodie tour with a guide that we’d used in the past, and that was great fun. The 5-hour bus ride from Kampok Cham to Siem Reap was not as painful as I feared; they used smaller coaches and made a couple of stops. But the chicken Caesar wrap in the boxed lunch from the boat was terrible IMO, so I would suggest grabbing some extra food at breakfast. Post-cruise in Siam Reap was all about the Angkor temples of course. Four different temples in less than 48 hours, and while we found them all very interesting and very different, some people did get templed out. The Sofitel in Siam Reap was a very, very nice hotel; we stayed an extra night and just spent the day relaxing by the pool. Food and drink was relatively expensive to compared to the rest of the country (which comes with staying in a resort hotel). One night we went into the city, to a good restaurant and then to "Pub Street", which has to be experienced. Overall it was an excellent experience and a very enjoyable trip, enough so that we put down a future cruise deposit for another Ama cruise. Because of the (relatively) smaller number of passengers, we met and socialized with more people who became good friends than we ever have on larger sea-going cruises (with 20X the number of passengers). Highly recommended.
  13. Tour Info: HAL 14-day Voyage of the Midnight Sun, N. Statendam, May 2023 He all -- we sailed with HAL to Norway in May of this year, and I was looking for a place to post our tour information as an info source for others. This thread looks as good as any. Stavanger: We hiked Pulpit Rock with a HAL excursion, because what I'd read said to allow 7.5 to 8 hours, and we were only in port for 9 hours. In hindsight we probably could have done it independently. But aside from the usual higher cost, it worked out fine. There were three busloads of 50 people from our ship, plus several other tour buses, but the trail was not too crowded. And each bus had a very good & experienced guide on board who climbed with the group (if you wanted to stay with the group, which you did not have to). It's not a difficult hike, but it is strenuous at times; there were several people in our ship's group of 150 who should not have tried it IMO. But if you are reasonably fit and can hike 2 km uphill and back down again in under 4 hours, it is absolutely worth it (and perhaps the highlight of our trip). Flåm: We were supposed to do the HAL "Flåm Railway and Downhill Hike to Blomheller" excursion, but when we boarded the ship we were told that that excursion was cancelled because there was still too much snow. We could have recreated it on our own -- and one of our friends did just that -- but frankly we were not as keen on a 10-km downhill hike the day after hiking Pulpit Rock. So we just wandered around the town and hiked up to a waterfall. Ålesund: We did a "Private Tour of Troll Road and Ålesund Highlights" with Calm Giant Tours. Unfortunately, the Troll Road was still closed due to late snow-melt, but Iggy (the calm giant) was a fantastic tour guide and improvised. He was really an interesting and entertaining guy and even without the Troll Road I would highly recommend this. https://www.calmgianttour.com/ Trondheim: We did a 3-hour City & Waterfront Tour with Trondheim For You. Wanda was a terrific guide and everyone enjoyed this tour very much. Trondheim is a delightful town and I would recommend Wanda very highly. https://www.trondheimforyou.com/ Hammerfest: A group of us hiked the Gammelveien "Old Trail" and had lunch at the Turistua Lodge up on top. Honningsvåg: The main reason you're here is to go to the North Cape, and we booked the Blue Puffin North Cape Sightseeing Tour, https://www.blue-puffin.com/en/ It was a good tour, you stop at other places along the way, and our guide (the owner) was excellent. It was an unseasonably nice day in Honningsvåg so we went for a short hike when we returned, and then sat outside at a pub and a had a beer with the locals. Geiranger: Another Calm Giant Tour, "Geiranger Fjord Highlights". Again, Iggy is a terrific guide, so I would highly recommend this one too. Warning: The bus traffic coming back down the switchback roads to the port at the end of the day was horrific, and I think one bus misjudged a turn and blocked the road for a while. Our departure was delayed by at least an hour waiting for ship excursions to return. This was May, and it's apparently even worse in the summer months. Just plan accordingly... Bergen: We did a 2-hour Historical City Walk with Bergen Guideservice. It was good, but not great, but maybe we were just tired -- when you're up above the Arctic Circle in the late spring / summer and the sun never even comes close to setting, you tend to stay up later, and we had not caught up on sleep! Overall this was a fantastic cruise itinerary and we really enjoyed it. Will answer questions if I can.
  14. Hey, your spelling was darn near perfect! I lived in Montreal, and I certainly can’t tell the difference between “du” and “de” in spoken French! We’re really looking forward to this adventure. We leave for Saigon in 10 days. I will try to post if there’s any free time, or when we’re chilling between cruises in Siem Reap and Singapore.
  15. @hoosier2017 you are fantastic! If I can figure out how to game the system I will give you bonus cruiser points! 😎 Thanks re: tipping -- I will go back to the bank next week to top up. We have a US dollar account so it's easy to get nice new bills. We're starting HCMC and coming in a day early, so we have already booked a private foodie tour on scooters with a great guide that we have used before. I will ask his opinion about those evening entertainment options, didn't consider that sort of thing. Glad to hear from everyone that riding on the back of scooters is easier than riding on a motorcycle; HCMC is crazy with moto and scooter traffic! (and as a non-Canadian, your spelling of Cirque du Soleil was pretty darn close, so bravo!) We learned our lesson about always carrying tissues in South America in 2017 😁 We have our pharmacy already stocked: cipro, azithromycin, and clarithromycin (plus vax'd for typhoid and cholera, and of course Hep A/B). Hopefully we will be mindful enough and lucky enough not to need them. Good to know about the school supplies, we were wondering about that. We may bring some with us from Canada or go shopping in HCMC on the day we arrive. Looking forward to that encounter! Thanks again, your advice (and everyone else's on this thread) has been terrific and greatly appreciated!
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