Planning a Cruise to Asia - Our Experience

As you have stated know hello, please, thank you, same as in European countries.

In Shanghai we ate at a local restaurant near our hotel, no English speakers but they brought us a menu with pictures, Maccas in Shanghai had a picture menu too.

One of the most memorable meals we've ever had was in Austria at a restaurant on the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere - the scenery was gorgeous. Nobody spoke any English and we only know a few words in German, so we had to rely on the pictures along the side of the menu. It was so much fun.

I know planning is a big part of a trip, at least it is for me. However, I think you may be over planning these trips. Off course, everyone is different so this may be your comfort level.

I spent three unexpected weeks in Shanghai when DH was taken ill on a cruise ship. I coped perfectly well until my son was able to fly out to be with us. I asked the front desk staff to write down where I wanted to go and showed the taxi drivers. I stood outside a major hotel and asked the doorman to get me a cab back. This worked every time. I knew no Mandarin, and had very little currency since we only expected to have a day there. Bank machines were very useful. I decided then that if I manage there alone I could travel anywhere.

When we went to Japan, I found that T... A ... website had the names of hotels in local characters so I printed them before leaving home. We found more English speakers in China than in Japan, surprisingly enough.

Don't stress over the flights. They are a necessary evil if you want to see the world. My mother flew eight hours in economy several times a year until she was ninety. I wouldn't say she enjoyed it, but she wanted to come to visit us, so she did it. I expect to do the same since one of our sons lives in Europe with his family.

Sheila

Definitely use Google Translate with the languages that you need downloaded, in case you don't have internet access. You can touch the speaker button and hear how a word or phrase is pronounced, or have your phone say what you want to say. You can also rotate your phone to landscape mode and the local word will appear in big letters to more easily show a taxi driver, waiter, etc. You can use the camera feature in Google translate to translate signs or menus. Overall, it's an impressive app. You may actually be surprised how many people can speak English at least passably.

It's a good idea to have enough local currency but you will find that many places take credit cards, at least in reasonably sized cities. As you've already noted, use a card that doesn't charge a fee for international charges. Also let your CC company know that you are traveling so that they will expect overseas charges. The higher rates that you will pay in your local bank will be a VERY small costs compared to your total trip cost. It's well worth it to have some local cash. I got stuck once where my card would not work in an airport ATM and I needed to have the taxi driver wait while I got cash at my hotel.

Local restaurants may not speak English but larger restaurants that will have foreigners as customers will often have an English menu. Short of an English menu, pictures will often work, but it is still worth learning a few key words like steak or chicken (or using Google Translate as above).

A couple of other tips, which may be first time things for you:

1. Hotels sometimes require you to put your key card in a slot near the door to turn on power in the room. That way, when you leave the room with your key, power is turned off and not wasted if you leave the lights on.

2. Particularly in China, you may encounter bathrooms with no toilet bowl/seat. There may just be a hole in the floor with places to plant your feet and squat. Although it may seem unusual to a westerner, it's actually sanitary, since you are not touching anything. Some bathrooms will have both eastern and western stalls so that you can choose your preference.

As someone else noted, don't overthink things too much. Customs vary around the world but people are people. If you are polite and respectful (i.e. don't be the ugly American), people will try to help, even if there's a language barrier.

Next up is tours and ports.

 

I'm not sure if this is common in the region or around the world outside of America, but one thing that really surprised us was how far away from the listed cities the ship actually docked. I'll list below the advertised city, the actual port, and the travel time:

 

Shanghai - Baoshan (30-50 minute drive)

Kumamoto - Yatsushiro (1 hour to 1:15 drive)

Miyazaki - Aburatsu (1 hour to 1:15 drive)

Kochi - Kochi (10 minute drive from port to city center)

 

Singapore - Singapore (15 minute from airport to port, but also has good public transit)

Penang - Penang (Sounds like everything is within walking distance)

Bangkok - Laem Chabang (1:30 to 2 hour drive)

Ho Chi Minh - Phu My (1:30 to 2 hour drive)

 

We rarely book excursions through the ship, but with so many of these ports being far away we are considering it a lot more for this trip. Some ports, such as Phu My, require a lot of paperwork for tour companies to come into the port itself, so there isn't much choice other than going through the ship. For the Japanese ports we have a bit more options since the train lines are pretty thorough. As it is, we decided to do a tour through the cruise ship in Miyazaki, because there are two sites we really want to see that public transit doesn't visit, and for Kumamoto we are just going to take the bullet train up, and a regular train back to the ship.

 

We were also surprised to not find a lot of local tour options in the Japanese cities. We are so used to having a bunch of excursion choices, both through the ship and local companies, that it was a bit odd not finding much of anything. I think that might also partially be because that cruise is advertised as a "Culturally Enriching" cruise.

 

Kochi and Penang both seem like ports where we can just go on our own without an actual tour, but Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh we will likely book through Royal. Also interesting, Bangkok is an overnight stop; so that leaves us with some extra planning as well.

Having completed a SE Asia & China cruise in 2014 I have been following your planning with interest. As many have said, you can over-plan but starting with a broad idea of your requirements and needs will make for a less stressful experience.

I noted your comments about ship’s versus private tours in Thailand and Vietnam and thought I'd weigh-in with our experience. To start we were nervous about the distances the ports are from the cities to be visited, but after a good deal of research we decided to do Bangkok & HCMC (& Hanoi) with local tour companies. Bangkok was: tourwithtong@gmail.com and HCMC was done though: info@smiletoursvietnam.com. In both cases I sent a wish-list of the itinerary and the respondents advised what was possible in the time frame and the cost. It's worth remembering that these companies are quite used to arranging port entry and getting you back to the ship on time - it's a fundamental part of their business model and if they can't do this find a company who can! Subsequently, we chose to do a private tour in both these cities giving us schedule flexibility and it also meant that we didn't have to stop for long lunches or shopping - neither of which interested us. In addition, being in a car with a driver and guide meant that there was no parking involved - the driver stayed with the vehicle “going round the block” as necessary while we spent time in the sights and when we had finished he would be waiting right outside the door ready to whisk us away to the next stop. In this way we were able to travel much faster than the coach. As you are in Bangkok overnight there's less stress to get back on time on the first day and in fact when we visited this city we did a private tour on day one and a ship tour on day two. BTW - we also experienced an insane trishaw ride in HCMC which got you “up close and personal” with the thousands of motorbikes that congregate at every junction. Memorable!

True, private tours are not cheap, but I know we had a much better and more comfortable experience; on a tour bus you can only go as fast as the slowest and there's always someone who wants to do more shopping or get an ice-cream without thought for those people who have returned on-time and are kept waiting.

Lastly, currency. In Thailand we paid for the tour in Baht and in Vietnam they wanted US$. It seems that US$ are widely accepted in Vietnam, whereas Thailand require their own currency. We carried Baht and Dong but on both trips our guide paid for lunch and we reimbursed him - maybe we lost a bit on the rate, but in the great scheme of things the amount was insignificant - probably no more than a dollar or two. Our tour cost in Thailand was c10,000 Baht and Vietnam (just for HCMC) was cUS$300.

Whatever you decide, I'm sure you'll have a great time - full of incredible sights (e.g. the Buddha statues in Bangkok and the motorcycles in HCMC) and lasting memories.

WT

All good points. There is definitely a possibility that we are over-thinking things, I'm definitely interested in looking back at this thread after we travel and doing a retrospective or post-mortem if you will; see what all planning was really useful, what I seemed to never really need, and what I forgot/what would have been useful to know. Especially since we are doing two trips relatively close, I feel it will provide a unique opportunity to see what worked and what didn't for our trip to China, adjust accordingly, and then see how the changes impact our Singapore trip. What can I say, I am first and foremost a planner.

To continue with detailing our planning, one of the most recent things we've started planning for/researching is some of the specific cultural differences and laws at the places we are visiting. Some things we were already fully aware of, such as the fact that Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc are all blocked in China so we'll need a VPN on our phones/laptop.

For the most part I do agree that as long as you are polite and respectful, there is a fair amount of leeway when it comes to cultural norms. We have friends who are Japanese so we know some of the cultural rules (don't stick chopsticks upright in your rice, remove shoes when entering private homes/temples, when to use the various honorifics) But I'm not too worried with things like that; people understand tourists and leniency with some cultural differences.

Our bigger concern is with laws that might be different from country to country; one of our biggest personal concerns are laws and cultural beliefs about homosexuality, since we are a married gay couple. For these two trips the only places of concern were Singapore and Malaysia, both countries where homosexuality is technically illegal. Although in Singapore there is a vibrant LGBT culture and the laws are not enforced, the fact that there are laws on the books do mean we have to be a bit more conscientious and aware of ourselves.

Some other laws we came across in our research: No chewing gum in Singapore. Don't do anything that could be considered insulting to the Thai monarchy (including damaging or stepping on the currency). Really strong anti-littering laws in a number of countries. But generally these all fall under the "Don't be obnoxious" and "Don't talk politics or religion" general rules of thumb.

The last thing I can think of that we've planned/researched is holidays, and this was actually completely unintentional, but has become something I know we'll research for any future trips.

The Singapore cruises were planned to celebrate my birthday which is February 15th. We looked at a few cruises in Asia and noticed that cruises right after my birthday were significantly more expensive than cruises in the rest of the month. Royal labeled these cruises as CNY cruises, which I had to come to cruise critic to figure out what it meant.

As it turns out, the day after my birthday is Chinese New Year. We didn't even think about holidays but now that we know we are really excited. It is almost like we are getting 3 vacations in one: We get to see Singapore for the first time, we get a SE Asia cruise, and we get to experience Chinese New Year.

When we found out about it, I was expecting hotel prices to be sky high, but so far from what we've looked up they seem fairly reasonable.

hi we are staying in les suites at the moment then 6 day japan cruise, watch out if you get a cab even in the official line we got charged more, but on the plus side most of the touring in shanghai you can do yourself bus to the watertown $12 stay half a day and back to town definitely splash on a bund view room at les suites spectacular views from your room

also they put a hold of 1250 cny till you leave the hotel then its returned any questions ask away we leave 31st for quantum

Hi! DH and I are going on the same cruise out of Singapore, the 7 night one on Feb 8! But we are travelling from Australia, so looking forward to learning, and maybe sharing a little of our planning!👍

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All good points. There is definitely a possibility that we are over-thinking things, I'm definitely interested in looking back at this thread after we travel and doing a retrospective or post-mortem if you will; see what all planning was really useful, what I seemed to never really need, and what I forgot/what would have been useful to know. Especially since we are doing two trips relatively close, I feel it will provide a unique opportunity to see what worked and what didn't for our trip to China, adjust accordingly, and then see how the changes impact our Singapore trip. What can I say, I am first and foremost a planner.

 

To continue with detailing our planning, one of the most recent things we've started planning for/researching is some of the specific cultural differences and laws at the places we are visiting. Some things we were already fully aware of, such as the fact that Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc are all blocked in China so we'll need a VPN on our phones/laptop.

 

For the most part I do agree that as long as you are polite and respectful, there is a fair amount of leeway when it comes to cultural norms. We have friends who are Japanese so we know some of the cultural rules (don't stick chopsticks upright in your rice, remove shoes when entering private homes/temples, when to use the various honorifics) But I'm not too worried with things like that; people understand tourists and leniency with some cultural differences.

 

Our bigger concern is with laws that might be different from country to country; one of our biggest personal concerns are laws and cultural beliefs about homosexuality, since we are a married gay couple. For these two trips the only places of concern were Singapore and Malaysia, both countries where homosexuality is technically illegal. Although in Singapore there is a vibrant LGBT culture and the laws are not enforced, the fact that there are laws on the books do mean we have to be a bit more conscientious and aware of ourselves.

 

Some other laws we came across in our research: No chewing gum in Singapore. Don't do anything that could be considered insulting to the Thai monarchy (including damaging or stepping on the currency). Really strong anti-littering laws in a number of countries. But generally these all fall under the "Don't be obnoxious" and "Don't talk politics or religion" general rules of thumb.

Wish your general rules of thumb were followed by everyone. Sigh.

SE Asia is a very different area. Go with the idea of accepting and respecting local culture, you will be fine. People react to how you act. I have met some of the loveliest people there. In Singapore I was checking my map in the MRT station and a lady came up to me and asked if I needed help, in Beijing while chatting with a cleaner in the hotel, he apologised for his poor English. He was able to carry on a conversation with me, so it was pretty good. Could I do the same in Chinese? No.

Thanks so much for your post! Looking forward to following along with you on your journey...

When you venture out from your hotel make sure you take a card with hotel address in local language.

This is great advice! When I was in Shanghai for work, pretty much none of the cab drivers knew English, and we'd always show them our hotel card that had the hotel address written in the local language. Fun story-> we ran into one cab driver, far from our hotel, who could neither speak English NOR read the hotel card.... It was super fun trying to get back to the hotel with him driving :)

My brother left today for China to go on the Quantum with his new bride. It will be their honeymoon cruise. They are doing the 6 day cruise I think you are doing. I am very jealous of him because my goal is to do a cruise in Asia. I have always been fascinated with the culture there, so it sounds really cool to go there. I hope one day I can. Enjoy your cruises and now I can live vicariously through my brother who will be on the QOS this week!

when you stay at les suites if you like Chinese food a must go is lost heaven a block from hotel very reasonable price lovely ambience

I will agree with many and especially if you are older, long flights suck. Not that it applies to you but on a recent trip from Florida SW airlines to La over night at hotel in La, and then United to Hong Kong from San Francisco(yes had to take a short flight to SF) with 5 days in HK and then Tiger airlines (yikes, had to pay a couple of dollars for water to take meds) no seat assignment to Singapore.

Now my point, I booked the comfort seating in the long haul leg, thank the TA who made me do it. So do yourself a favor and book the upgraded seats in economy. Do it as soon as possible, as stated above book a isle seat, much better even if you have to get up to let seat mates move around

Assuming everybody wasn't scared off by the huge wall of text above I'll continue with a few other points we learned when dealing with flights.

 

First thing, always always be wary of time zones. I hate to admit it, but I wasn't as diligent as I should have been. I saw that the flights from the West Coast to Singapore were 18 hours. Our cruise is scheduled to leave on the 5th, so I figured plan a flight for the 3rd. Arrive 18 hours later, we'll arrive the day before the cruise and have plenty of time to enjoy Singapore before heading to the port the next morning. Alas, that's 18 hours plus a time difference of 15 hours between CA and Singapore. The actual arrival time of our flight wasn't until 7AM the 5th, the morning of our cruise. Thankfully this should still be plenty of time, but it could have been disastrous.

 

The second thing that we spent a lot of time researching was on the airlines. We are really familiar with the major US carriers, but there's a lot more airlines out there, and all are definitely not created equally. Domestically, we have airlines we prefer and a few that we absolutely won't ever fly, no matter how much cheaper they are. When it came to foreign flights we came across a lot of companies we didn't know anything about. We relied a lot on various online reviews, but that caused another issue. Different people have different expectations, and something that is unacceptable to one person might be completely fine to us.

 

Ultimately we decided to go with the cheapest flights available, which happened to be on Asiana for the Shanghai cruise, and a United non-stop (longest flight on a Dreamliner and on any US carrier) to Singapore. We heard a lot of people (even a couple of friends) say they would never fly United on an international flight, but ultimately for the price we decided it was worth it. For one, the flight is on a Dreamliner which has more leg room and wider seats than the 777 they used to use for the long haul international routes. Secondly, it's a non-stop flight which could be good or bad; 18 hours in a seat will be painful, but when layovers are added in the other options were all 25-30 hours total in airports and planes.

 

Ultimately, for budget reasons, we stuck with regular economy for both the China and Singapore flights. There are a lot of people who think we are insane for doing that, but we've never flown internationally before, so we don't have anything better to compare it to. Ultimately, I think it really comes down to who you are and how you like to travel. We have friends who have told us that if you can't afford a balcony then you just shouldn't cruise, and we've never had a problem being in an interior. Maybe we'll be singing a different tune after the flight, but for now we're happy with the price we got and excited for the rest of the planning.

This is the upside of being an Aussie travelling to Asia. We have an economy flight from Melbourne to Singapore, departing 12pm and arriving 4.50pm. The flight is just under 8 hrs. We are not experienced travellers, but I'm hoping that we won't be feeling a massive impact from jet lag.

Our flight home from Singapore to Melbourne leaves at 8pm and arrives at 6.45 the next morning. For this flight I have paid extra for front row, extra leg room seats. Hopefully we can get a little bit of sleep on the flight home....😀

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I think what makes the most sense to talk about next was finding hotels. This is an ongoing process for our trip to Singapore, but like I said, we had to have hotels reserved before we could get the Chinese Visa, so we booked those a while ago.

 

In many ways booking a hotel internationally wasn't much different than booking domestically. The online booking sites we use all work the same and prices are given in (estimated) USD. Part of the problem though was that at home we are familiar with all the major brands. Sure, sometimes you'll get a location that is worse than others in the same brand, but as a general rule we know what to expect when looking at different brands. In Shanghai most of the hotels are not brands that we are familiar with, and even the ones that do match brands we have in America, there is no guarantee that things will be similar.

 

We spent a lot of time on TripAdvisor, reading reviews of the hotels, but online reviews are always a mixed bag. One person would say the staff spoke excellent English, the next reviewer said they spent two hours trying to check in because nobody could understand them. One person said the breakfast was amazing, another said it was horrible. Ultimately we just decided to set a few filters for ourselves; we picked a location in the city, set a maximum per night price, and said the average TripAdvisor rating had to be at least a 4.0. That left us with 12 hotels to choose from. We spent a lot of time looking at traveler photos on TripAdvisor, and chose the best 6 based on pictures. At this point I just wanted to pick a hotel and be done so we could start working on the Visas, so I used quite possibly the strangest criteria possible; a review for one of the hotels was talking about how the rooms had the awesome high-tech Japanese toilets. Winner, winner.

 

In the end we settled on Da Zhong Pudong Airport Hotel for the night we got into Shanghai (since we were getting in so late and have to go through customs/immigration we wanted something super close) and then after the cruise we are staying a few nights at Les Suites Orient on the Bund.

 

A few things we learned; pay close attention to the hotel policies. We found a large number that did not offer 24 hour check in, so if you weren't checked in by 10PM you were out of luck. Currency can also cause some confusion; even though you might see the price listed in USD, it's actually charged in the local currency, and the price conversion quoted is just an estimate, final conversion rate will come from your bank. Also, credit cards without a foreign transaction fee are great.

I also spent several weeks scanning different websites for the best deal on a hotel.

Interestingly, I noticed that the prices generally went up around Thursday night, and went back down around Monday..... This consistently seemed to happen every week, and I took this into consideration when I booked our accommodation....

I was looking for the best deal on price, location, ratings and reviews. We also didn't especially want to stay in a place that had 4 million rooms and catered to mass produced tourism.

We settled on the Village Hotel Albert Court by Far East Hospitality, near Little India.

As noted before, we're not experienced travellers. So I'm just hoping that this place will be ok.👍😊

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This is the upside of being an Aussie travelling to Asia. We have an economy flight from Melbourne to Singapore, departing 12pm and arriving 4.50pm. The flight is just under 8 hrs. We are not experienced travellers, but I'm hoping that we won't be feeling a massive impact from jet lag.

Our flight home from Singapore to Melbourne leaves at 8pm and arrives at 6.45 the next morning. For this flight I have paid extra for front row, extra leg room seats. Hopefully we can get a little bit of sleep on the flight home....😀

 

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Thanks to the international dateline, our October flight leaves China at like 11AM and lands back in San Francisco that same day at 10:30 AM. It's like time travel :cool:

I will agree with many and especially if you are older, long flights suck. Not that it applies to you but on a recent trip from Florida SW airlines to La over night at hotel in La, and then United to Hong Kong from San Francisco(yes had to take a short flight to SF) with 5 days in HK and then Tiger airlines (yikes, had to pay a couple of dollars for water to take meds) no seat assignment to Singapore.

Now my point, I booked the comfort seating in the long haul leg, thank the TA who made me do it. So do yourself a favor and book the upgraded seats in economy. Do it as soon as possible, as stated above book a isle seat, much better even if you have to get up to let seat mates move around

Tigerair is a low cost airline. You fly Cathay or SIA but you have to 2 or 3 times more. I always pay $ 20 extra for row 1 window for the peace and quiet for this 4 hour flight. I always bring an empty bottle with me which you can fill up with water before boarding instead of paying extra $ 3 on the plane. No trouble getting in and out. I always recline my seat maximum. Poor guy behind would have my seat in his face but if he is a season traveller he would recline his seat maximum also.