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kayakcove
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Looking hard at Star Legend Tokyo to Beijing in October. Looking forward to getting back on Windstar, but am not seeing much in the way of comments on trips to Asia. Wondering if they may still be working out some bugs on port calls and excursions, just because these are pretty new stops for Windstar. No excursions currently posted for this trip, but looked at one in April also gong to some of the same port calls and excursions seemed to more expensive. Anyone with experience on itineraries in this area or additional thoughts. Will need to study the ports more to see what independent excursion options there may be.

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Hello Kayakcove...we have booked the Oct 27 Beijing-Hong Kong just last week. We were originally booked on the Viking Orion for the relatively same itinerary 1 week earlier. After reviewing the Windstar info., we decided that 11 days onboard was enough and sailing with 212 was better than 950.

I also noticed that there were no excursions listed, but I called Windstar and was told they would be released as soon as contracts were signed.

This will be our 12th(or 13th?) cruise with Windstar and have been on the Star Legend before...and loved it.

We would love to contact others on this cruise and set-up some private tours.

 

Howard

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Look forward to your reports on sailing Windstar in Asia. We are looking at the January 27, 2019 voyage on the Star Legend from Hong Kong to Bangkok, with stops focused on Vietnam. We've not sailed on Windstar before, but love smaller ships, with experience multiple SeaDream and Star Clippers trips.

Thanks,

Steve

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There are a bunch of us of Tokyo (Yokohama) to Osaka in a couple weeks and I'd expect reports after we're back at the end of April. I'm very excited that WS is giving Asia another try after very low loads right after they took over the triplets. We decided to do a mix of a few WS tours, some private and a few days we'll just do on our own. Prices weren't out of line with what WS tours usually cost, which is generally more than you'd pay on your own if you do your research.

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  • 1 month later...
Looking hard at Star Legend Tokyo to Beijing in October. Looking forward to getting back on Windstar, but am not seeing much in the way of comments on trips to Asia. Wondering if they may still be working out some bugs on port calls and excursions, just because these are pretty new stops for Windstar. No excursions currently posted for this trip, but looked at one in April also gong to some of the same port calls and excursions seemed to more expensive. Anyone with experience on itineraries in this area or additional thoughts. Will need to study the ports more to see what independent excursion options there may be.

 

We did the Grand Japan itinerary in April and went to some of the ports on your itinerary: Hiroshima, Busan and disembarked in Osaka. We were due to go to Shimizu too but that port of call was cancelled due to rain and high winds. The Japanese people are very friendly and welcoming - it’s the only country I’ve cruised around where large numbers of the locals come to welcome you and wave you off, even braving wet, cool weather to do so, which was the case when we departed from Yokohama. At the ports of call, there were tourist information booths or people on hand to help give directions. Most of the Japanese ports also provided free shuttles to get to/from downtown (Windstar gave out the shuttle schedule for each port at the reception desk). The port authority in Busan (South Korea) also ran free shuttles which was a great help as the port is quite a distance from the downtown area. That one dropped us off across the road from the fish market, which is definitely eye opening!

 

I see that like us you have a relatively short stop in Hiroshima, which makes going to Miyajima, the Peace Memorial Park and Museum extremely difficult. The majority of people opted to do one or the other. If you only want to see the A-Dome and go to the museum there is absolutely no need to pay for a WS excursion. Just take the free shuttle bus to it and explore at your own pace. The shuttle bus drop off/pick up point was right outside the museum; the memorial park is next to it. If I recall correctly the free shuttle bus also made a second stop at a shopping mall, but as that wasn’t of interest to us I can’t be sure. As we had been to the Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki earlier in our cruise, we didn’t want to go in the museum in Hiroshima; however, we did want to see the A-Dome and go to Miyajima. So as soon as the ship was cleared by the local officials, we disembarked and got directions from the tourist information people on how to get to the nearest ferry terminal to go to Miyajima. We basically had to walk along the pathway on the shoreline and then followed the signposts for the terminal, which took about 20 minutes. Note, this was not the JR ferry - that terminal is much further away. It would be worth looking up the ferry times online before you leave for your cruise. Ticket sales start about 20 minutes before the departure time; unfortunately all of the announcements in the terminal were in Japanese only and we only realized that ticket sales had started when another passenger kindly informed us in English. We opted to buy a single ticket as we had read that a different ferry company ran a boat from Miyajima to the Peace Park. We then walked down to the dockside. Multiple ferries go from the same dock and one came in a few minutes before ours was due to depart. So we, together with some other WS cruisers who were waiting for the ferry went to get on. Luckily the port employee realized that we were trying to board the wrong ferry! Ours came in a few minutes later, bang on time. The ferry made one stop before heading over to the island, which turned out to be much closer to where the Star Legend was berthed and some WS cruisers who had arranged private guides boarded there. I’m not sure though if their guides had pre-purchased the ferry tickets or if there was someone selling them there.

 

Once we disembarked at Miyajima we saw a boat owned by the company doing the Peace Park route berthed on the other side of our pier. On exiting the pier both that company and the one we arrived on were offering tickets for sale. As these are fairly small ferries they encourage you to get your return ticket for your choice of sailing before heading off to explore. It worked out that there was a ferry to the Peace Park that would give us a short amount of time to explore there and catch the last free shuttle bus back to the ship. So we purchased our tickets and were told to arrive back ahead of the scheduled departure time (sorry can’t recall how far in advance they suggested). Then we went off to explore Miyajima, walking past the JR ferry terminal to head to the “floating” Tori gate. We had time to tour the Itsukushima Shrine, take photos with the tori gate in the background, browse the shops and try a few island delicacies including Miyajima beer, grilled oysters and a maple leaf shaped dessert, which was offered with a variety of different fillings. We then took the ferry to the Peace Park which actually goes right beside the A-Dome. We had just enough time to see the various memorials, including the very moving hall of remembrance. Finding the pick up point for the shuttle to return to the ship was easy - we used the map on the bus schedule given out by Windstar and just looked for other cruisers and WS crew.

We were in Busan for just a day. We took the free shuttle downtown, explored

Ja-Gal-Ch'i Fish Market, took the escalators up to Yongdusan Park and Busan Tower, went into a nice Buddhist Temple we happened to pass, and looked around the stores and stalls. As we weren’t scheduled to leave port until 10 pm, we had made a reservation for Candles. It was nice to eat there with the lit-up Busan Gwangandaegyo Bridge in the background.

We disembarked in Osaka; the section of the port we berthed in was very barren - basically the dockside had a large shed/hangar where people collected their luggage. We headed straight to Kyoto by train. We had contemplated walking to the nearest subway station (about 15 minute walk from the port) to get to the train station, but as we had our luggage we took a taxi instead. There are 2 train options for getting to Kyoto from Osaka - the high speed Shinkansen (15 minute journey) which goes from Shin-Osaka Station and the regular local train from Osaka Station that takes 30 minutes and is quite cheap. Kyoto is quite spread out and a lot of the key attractions are in the north. Kyoto has subways and a good bus system. To get the most out of your visit and see the sights you’re interested in, it would be worth getting a guide to help you navigate the city.

There are obviously a few private tour operators that can offer excursions in each port. What you may not know is that many cities in Japan have Goodwill Guide organizations, where volunteers show you the sights. We had a professional guide for a day in Tokyo and a goodwill one for a day in Kyoto and honestly there was no difference between the quality of the tours they gave.

By the way, Google maps was definitely our “friend” in Japan helping us navigate to places, both on foot and via public transport. We rented a Wi-Fi hotspot for the duration of our stay in Japan which ensured continuous Wi-Fi coverage (although the signal did drop off at sea and we had to switch it off when in South Korea to avoid extra charges).

 

One thing of note is that you do have to go through immigration to exit Japan before sailing to Busan and again on your return. The officials determine the time window in which all passengers must present themselves. Windstar informs you of the procedures (although they incorrectly gave us immigration forms to complete on our exit) and the timeframe for presentation the night before. This may mean that you have to be back at the ship earlier than you anticipated. For example, our last port before South Korea was Sasebo. According to the itinerary we were in port until 10 pm. Normally this would mean an all aboard time of 9:30 pm, but the timeframe for presenting passports to the immigration personnel was between 7 pm and 9 pm and once you had received your exit stamp, you weren’t allowed to leave the ship. While this didn’t really impact our plans for this port, it would have been nice to know in advance that the real time ashore was shorter.

Hope this helps. Enjoy your cruise and Japan!

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The previous post has some great advise. Pay close attention to the Hiroshima stuff - we also went to Miyajima on a group tour (Not WS) and spent a fair amount of money doing what others did on their own. Even things like taking a taxi to a ferry when we could have walked along the shore was unknown to us. I would have liked to have fit in the peace park, but did not know that there was a ferry from Miyajima directly there OR that the port shuttle stopped right there. Our tour left us yearning for more time to explore the shops on Miyajima which looked interesting.

 

 

I did feel that WS is still feeling their way a bit and I hope they take feedback into consideration. Too many of the tours involved what seemed like hours and hours on buses and the content got repetitive after awhile - oh look, another Temple...

 

The pier in Osaka is truly in the middle of nowhere. We did walk to the train station as there were no taxis to be had and a long line waiting. That walk was also through pretty barren stuff. In places like this is would be nice is WS would offer a relatively low cost shuttle into town instead of just the full tours.

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