Serenity Grandeur 1 dag cruise (Ha Long, Lan Ha Bay, Cat Ba Island)

This trip had ups and downs. My main concern is it has a target demographic of probably 17-28 years old, not suitable for young kids unless they are super athletic as the kayaking can be quite strenuous and the dark cave can really scare the kids. Our family is use to kayaking and out doors activities so this wasn’t the first time doing this sort of activity. We were travelling with our nieces and nephews which an age group of 36,32,31,14,12,10 years old and we really found that this was not at all kid friendly. The kayaking starts off fine, you get off the boat start paddling but as soon as you get to the cave area there is a strong current which makes it quite difficult for the kids to paddle. There is only one guide, so if you fall behind, you get left behind… no turning around and checking if everyone’s ok. We got to the cave and the tide was very high - the guide attempted to take people through and it was quite dangerous, no light except for one torch at the front of the line for the guide etc. All the kids we were with didn’t like it and were quite scared. After the turning back from the cave the guide headed off again - we were stuck in a strong current and couldn’t get out of it but then were later told you needed to stick by the rocks to skip the current this wasn’t explained as the guide just goes on with no really explanation and at the point it was too late, we were stuck and got very tired trying to fight our way out of it. There was another family of 4 there in exactly the same situation as us who also said they felt like it was not kid friendly, which is fine that’s it not but I think it would be good to explain this to families before they book it. The guide didn’t come back at all to check (it had been 10 minutes or more we had been left for), just carried on with the tour so we decided to make our way back to the boat. We would have liked some warning that it was going to be like that as we would have happily just kayak ‘d around the lovely rocks near the boat and completely avoided the current. I think two guides would be helpful to improve the safety of this tour. The boat was really nice, the food for lunch was so delicious and plenty of it. It catered to differently dietary needs as well. The water around Halong bay had quite a lot of rubbish in it and was fairly sad to see. Lan Ha Bay seemed to have less rubbish and seemed cleaner. On the way back we stopped off monkey island (this wasn’t written on the itinerary). We found this to be very unethical - The macaques on this island were not native to monkey island - they were moved from Thailand to Vietnam (Cat ba) for tourism purposes which ethically is quite questionable. The island itself does not have the resources to sustain the number of macaques on the island and they rely heavily on the tourism to maintain numbers of 60+ (the tour guides and tourist feeding them) and without tourism the numbers drop to 20-30 (we were told this by the guides as well, I don’t think he realised the impact of this). The tour guides take cookies and things to feed the macaques which is a horrific diet for them and there was a lot of teasing, chasing, splashing the macaques which again really isn’t ethical. It causes the animals to get very frustrated and show a lot of aggression towards the guides and visitors once the food is no longer available. We were really disappointed to see this happening and we refused to go onto the island. Reading reviews there have been quite a few injuries caused by the macaques to people - needing hospital visits and rabies treatment. We were just hoping that this review discourages anyone from taking the risk of going onto the island and also helps hopefully prevent the ongoing unethical treatment of the macaques on this island. The guides hopefully will learn that this is not an ethical way of interacting with wildlife and this is unsafe for visitors. Mixed review really but hope this helps.

I had a wonderful day. It was very good organised. We meet our guide(Mr. Happy) and he explained to us about the place, answer our question, make sure that we are ok and enjoy our trip. He is a very sweet guy. The ship eas very nice, clean and well maintained. The food was delicious.. All the staff were excellent. I definitely recommend.