Emeraude Classic Cruises

Not much to be honest. Ha Long Bay is beautiful but tourism like this has ruined it. Every sight is filled with swarms of people, the activities are highly controlled and sterile of any real enjoyment. You can’t swim in the bay except for 30 mins in a cordoned off area of a man made beach with the guests of 10 other ships so you’re basically in a sticky polluted suncreamed tourist soup. You can kayak sure, for about 20 mins again in a corderned off area. Want to explore a cave? Great?! But you’ll have to get up there at a glacial pace as you que all the way up the 600 steps to the top as Vietnamese and Chinese tourists for some reason try pushing past you constantly as if it’s going to get them there any faster. Food was okay, I actually found the Vietnamese food served at lunch to be pretty poor quality and I ended up not eating much of my plate which is odd for me as I love Vietnamese food. It had a strange flavour. The western food in the evening was quite nice and I liked that breakfast included grilled tomatoes and beans.

Room smelt of damp Bed was rock solid Drinks are 4x more expensive than on the shore The staff were so unhelpful they ruined the trip and we left a day early. We booked a 2 day 3 night trip and were happy with the itinerary which said our second day would be spent exploring various caves and islands etc on our own without the 1 night people. After dinner the ship manager came over to us and explained we wouldn’t be doing that but instead would be taking a boat to the market in Ha Long and would spend the morning there before coming back to port and meeting the new passengers then we would repeat everything we did on the first day again. We told her we had spent money to be in the bay on a boat not at a market and that we didn’t want to see the same sights all over again. We spent hours speaking to her about this, mainly because she wouldn’t leave us alone. We had many debates about why we wouldn’t want to go to a market or do the same things twice, and we spoke to the main customer service team on the phone a number of times as they were refusing to let us cancel because of booking.com commission which we said we would pay if necessary. The next morning I had emails saying that the itinerary was not just the market and the manager told me that this is not what she had said and it was just her poor English that was the problem but she had seen the itinerary now as it had been emailed to her and we could do all of those things if we wanted. Clearly that makes no sense, either she knew the itinerary before and explained it totally wrong or she received it later by email and decided we could do that but it can’t be both. Its very strange to say it’s the fault of her English considering the long conversations we had all about the market and doing the same activities again. If she cannot speak the language of the majority of her guests well enough to regurgitate an itinerary that they must run quite regularly then perhaps she is not in the right role.