salmaguer

Thanks for the suggestions! I've contacted Indochina Junk and am in the process of booking a private cruise with them for the day. Now we just need to figure out what to do for that extra half day...

@solent Richard thanks for sharing your review - looks like an incredible experience!

Thanks so much for the recommendation! Looks perfect! I had seen Indochina Junk before, but had somehow missed their one-day options. And I agree that the planning is a big part of the fun! :)

Now another question - our ship arrives inn Halong Bay at 11am on our first day in port and leaves at 5pm the next day, so we essentially have a day and a half there. Since Halong Bay is our priority, we are going to spend our long day out on the bay, but that doesn't leave us enough time to also do Hanoi (given the 4 hour drive each way). Any thoughts on what else we can do in the afternoon of the first day?

Hi all,

I'm new to posting here, but am in the beginning stages of planning a Southeast Asia cruise for 2019, and cruise critic is already proving to be a great source of information!

We will be traveling on the Oceania Nautica In February and March of 2019, leaving from Singapore, stopping in various ports in Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia, and ending in Hong Kong. We're very excited for this trip, especially to visit Halong Bay, which has been a bucket list item for us for a long time! I've been trying to find a good company to pre-book a junk cruise with, but I'm having some trouble finding exactly what I'm looking for. We're hoping to find an all-day tour (preferably 8 hours or as close as we can get to that), allowing us to explore more of the bay. We would like a boat that will allow us to get off and swim and/or kayak in the water once we get out in the bay, and that will take us to some of the fishing villages, caves, and grottos I've read about. There are three people in our group (all adults) with the possibility of a couple more joining closer in, and we would prefer a private (or very small) tour.

Most of the tours I've found so far are shorter (4 hour) cruises, or else go overnight, which we are not interested in, since we already plan on skipping out on two other nights of our cruise for an Angkor Wat excursion.

Does anyone have any recommendations for junk cruises (that we can pre-book...not interested in making day-of arrangements since this is one of the most important parts of the trip for us) that tick all or most of our boxes?

Thanks in advance!

Sarah