Nice Family Tour

Vietnam | Dec 21 - Jan 4, 2024

We loved our time on the beach at Thanh Kieu Beach Resort. We were there for Christmas, and really appreciated the holiday spirit created by the staff. The bungalows were very clean and nice, the breakfast was our favourite, the large beach with chairs and the pool area were great, and all the staff was very friendly. We didn't love the town area that is walkable, but otherwise thought the location was good.

Aluna Ben Thanh Hotel was good...not great...not bad. The location to everything in the city was great. The rooms were comfortable enough. The bathrooms were nice. Our only complaint was with the breakfast room, which is quite small and was usually full when we arrived. The food was okay.

We loved our time at Silkhotel. The staff was amazing, and the rooms were very nice. We even used the pool and the gym at the hotel. The breakfast buffet was huge and delicious. And, the location was ideal. Couldn't have been better!

We only stayed at San Boutique for one night. We stayed at San Premium for the other two. Overall, the staff was wonderful, but the rooms were a bit shabby. The location of San Boutique was good as it is near the lake and walkable to most things.

We really enjoyed our time on the La Pandora Cruise. The staff was wonderful, and the boat was nice. I thought our rooms were comfortable and the bathroom was nice. There was an upper deck for happy hour at night and the dining room was nice. The food was just okay, but there was a lot of it! There were definitely much nicer boats around us, but I thought everything about this boat was good.

This tour wasn't great for our family. We have two kids, 7 & 11, and a 10 hour day was just not something they could do. We stayed for the first half of the tour in town, then the kids and I went back to the hotel while my husband went on the hours long drive to the Cu Chi tunnels. I should have separated the tour into two days to make it better for my children. The Ho Chi Minh tour was good for the adults, but didn't really capture the interest of my children. We were first taken to a post office and a church that was under construction. I'm not really sure what we were supposed to do there. Being with a group is always a little harder with children, and this was no exception.

We actually asked to leave this tour early. We were excited for a lot of snorkeling, which is what was described. Instead, after being taken to the pearl factory for the first hour, we were taken to an island where we were told we could swim or have our pictures taken. We decided we would swim, but when we got to the island, the water in the bay was filled with trash. We spent an hour watching our guide take fabricated drone footage of people on the beach. Then we went snorkeling...for 20 minutes. They didn't have any equipment for kids, so my 7 year old, who was VERY excited to go snorkeling, had a leaky mask much of the time because it was too big. We then went to an island with about 60 other boats and hundreds of other tourists to have lunch and again get a fabricated drone video laying on a paddle board...but didn't actually get to do any paddle boarding. We decided the swimming at the beach of our resort was way better than anything we had experienced on the tour and asked to go back.

We had rain the whole time in Hoi An, but we still enjoyed our time there. John, our tour guide for this tour, was really wonderful. He was so optimistic and accommodating. We walked through old town, and even took a boat ride to release our wish boat. That was all fine, but our favorite part was the street food tour. We went to a few great places, one of which we went to the next night as well.

We started the day at the market, which was fun to see. The basket boat was a total "only for tourists" type of activity, but our kids enjoyed it. "Fishing" was a bit of a stretch. They gave a little stick with a string to the kids to catch crabs. It definitely wasn't a bit part of the overall activity. The definite highlight was the cooking class, which was one of the best we have done in six months of travel. The kids really got to engage in making the food, and everything was delicious.

This tour included a tour of the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum (although the actual Mausoleum was closed) and the Temple of Literature. Dicky, our tour guide, did a good job of relaying a lot of information about what we were seeing. It was nice to have a private tour.

We loved kayaking around the bay, and our highlight of our time in Ha Long Bay was swimming. It was beautiful and unique. I think we would have liked it more if there hadn't been 10 other boats doing the exact same thing, but such is the nature of the beast.

We woke up very early to get to the cave before all the other boats. In the description of this tour, it shows kayakers going into a cave. As it turns out, that cave has been closed for a number years. So, we just got onto a boat that someone rowed and went through a large tunnel to a type of inlet...then rowed back. It was maybe a one hour excursion and I didn't feel as though we were able to see much. We had a very rushed breakfast before heading out in the morning, so much suggestion is to save breakfast until after the tour.