A Beautiful boat and fantastic crew
along with the excellent food and activities ie kiacking , cycling , bamboo boat to the caves and squid fishing e c t .
But unfortunately all this was spoilt by the garbage and filth that is floating around the bay constantley day by day minute by minute.
We were very unimpressed by this cruise. One guy especially made things worse, and his name was Son/Sonny. He was perpetually sarcastic and facetious about everything.
The drive there was in a very nice leather seated van. However, the driver didn’t speak any English. 10 minutes drive before the dock, they made us get off at an overpriced tourist trap pearl store for 30 minutes.
On the motorboat ride going to the larger cruise, Sonny claimed that the 1 night passengers were going to have lunch at 2:30pm, which caused a lot of confusion and anger amongst the group. This turned out not to be true, we did end up eating at 12:30. For some reason, the 2 night guests had a much better meal and larger portions with beef and vermicelli.
However the food quality was very lacking. Food took much too long to come out and the quality was poor. There were 5 “courses” but they were a cold bowl of soup, 2 small spring rolls, 3 fried prawns, and a beef dish but I think the beef had gone bad. Dessert was “sticky rice” but it was more of a salty rice puck, 3 pieces of soggy mango, and mango ice cream that had either gone bad, or was full of ice chunks and dairy lumps. We were hungry again at 4 and dinner wasn’t until 7pm…
Then Sonny said we could all go swimming or go in the jacuzzi. He said multiple times that the water in both was warm. It was ice cold in the bay and the jacuzzi. My husband asked him to check if the jacuzzi heater was indeed on, and Sonny claimed it had been turned on since the boat had left harbour. The water coming out was cold, and it continued to be cold the entirety of the trip. No one went in the jacuzzi over the 2 days.
There was a supply boat on the side of our room that was pumping in fresh water. I asked Sonny how long that would take, as we could not relax in the room while the supply boat was right next to the window and the loud motor was going. He said 5-10 minutes, almost done. It was more than an hour.
Happy hour/Sunset party was supposed to have biscuits and fruit. This turned out to be tiny crackers and no fruit. I asked for the fruit, they said fruit was for the cooking demonstration, I complained some more, finally they brought out some sliced watermelon and dragonfruit.
Dinner was fine, portions were large and the food was much better than lunch. The soup was still cold. For some reason the sauce on the plates for both lunch and dinner was gelatinous.
We tried squid fishing at night and no one caught anything. That’s ok, we had some beers and chatted with the other guests and had a good time. The next morning, I asked Sonny how much squid anyone had caught last night, knowing there had been none. He said people had caught “a lot” and then changed his answer to “1 or 2”. We were there Sonny, why are you a chronic liar?
Breakfast and kayaking was fine, apart from Sonny joking (again) that the bay water was “hot”. Lunch was also surprisingly excellent in buffet style, everything was hot and fresh. I don’t know why they didn’t do this the day before. The 2nd day food was definitely better than the first day. At least it ended on a good note.
Another guy, Vinny (the tour guide) was very helpful. He was always truthful, gave accurate instructions, told us interesting facts about what we were seeing in the bay, and was overall a really nice guy.
We did give Sonny our feedback but hilariously he tried to gaslight us. The sticky rice was just how it is in Vietnam (it really isn’t) and this was the first time he’s heard of people being driven to the pearl store (there was 20-30 vans at that pearl stores from various cruise lines). He claimed to not have said many of the jokes and blatant lies we asked about.
Don’t joke and lie to us Sonny, it’s not funny. People have travelled from far away and paid lots of money to come here.
From the moment you board the ship, service is superb. Staff were very attentive to our needs. Food was fabulous (especially the mid morning brunch). Bar prices were extremely reasonable.
Plunging into the cold ocean water is a must!