Saigon Dinner Cruise: The Oriental Pearl | HCMC, Vietnam

I was really excited to try a dinner cruise down the Saigon river. It seemed like an old-fashioned luxury. I saw the Elisa from the balcony of the Ho Chi Minh Port Museum and thought, what an interesting old wooden junk, I’ll try that one! I later found out that the Elisa is too large to sail, so it’s just permanently docked as a restaurant boat. There are many dinner cruises, but I wanted one of the old wooden boats, and the Oriental Pearl was the nicest one running.

It’s not expensive; it seems like locals can get tickets for $16 but any non-Vietnamese gets charged about $10 more. For the money, the food is sufficient, but not good. There’s a Western menu and an Asian menu; I chose the Asian menu, which ended up being two oysters, two fried chicken drums, bland fried rice in a pineapple, a fried crab roll and glass noodles with a couple shrimp. Drinks, including water, are extra. The cocktails are weak, and the boat is extremely hot, even with the fans on, even in December. The views are, frankly, ugly, with mostly 2000s and 2010s poorly lit office buildings all along the shore at first; further out, there’s just no lights, nothing.

If those were all my gripes, it would just be a neutral experience I wouldn’t choose again. However, I couldn’t wait to get off the boat for two other reasons I hate Vietnam for in general: chainsmokers and noise pollution. Everyone is allowed to smoke everywhere on the boat, and they do. I’m allergic to cigarette smoke and people in Vietnam act like it’s 1990 and it’s all in my head, maintaining a disgusting attitude as well as a disgusting vice. Wake up, it’s 2023 and you’re in a public health crisis! The Western world banned this 20 years ago.

As for noise, they have different musical entertainment on each section of the ship- the rear dining room, center dining room, lower dining room, and upper deck. There are no walls between the spaces. So 4 different live bands or sound systems playing at the same time, all night, and you can hear all of them, loud and clear. The level of noise pollution in Vietnam in general is also a serious problem; even local karaoke places think it’s cool to jack the volume up to decibel levels literally considered torture by the CIA, and the strategy on this boat was no different. They actually had a charming traditional music troupe rotating through the spaces, and it makes me genuinely sad to know their talents are wasted here night after night.

Lastly, the crowd was fine in the center dining room, mostly couples on dates and tourists, but a bit trashy elsewhere. The rear dining room was taken up by some sort of corporate party where they were drinking to the point of bad behavior, and the lower dining room was dedicated to the occupants of two giant Chinese tour buses also getting really wild. Fun for them, not so much for the smaller parties onboard.

Well, yolo. It was on my list, I tried it. Traveling isn’t perfect!

Tam Coc Boat Tour, Ninh Binh | Vietnam

The Tam Coc boat ride is the most popular in Ninh Binh, because one of the entry points is steps from Tam Coc’s main corner, where restaurants, hotels, minimarts etc. converge. It’s lovely, but shorter and not as interesting as the Trang An boat tour. Tam Coc is also known for having much more aggressive guides, who will essentially refuse to bring you back to shore unless you give them a $20 or $30ish tip on top of the ticket price. The ‘galaxy grotto’ is awful in my opinion; they’ve lit the cave with brightly colored lights, many flashing or swirling.

John’s Tours, Phu Quốc | Vietnam

Every tourist city in Vietnam seems to have an ubiquitous day tour, the low price/greatest hits combo that’s sold by every agency and hotel, but serviced by only one or two companies.

In Phu Quốc, that tour is the 4 island boat trip by John’s Tours, best with the Aquatopia water park/cable car upgrade, and often combined with evening squid fishing (and let me be super clear, I have not been compensated by them in any way):  https://phuquoctrip.com/daily-boat-trips

You can do the cable car and Aquatopia water park by yourself, of course, but I found that they were less expensive when combined with the tour due to the included hotel transfers. There was also more than enough time at the water park to do 5 or 6 of the big slides and a trip around the lazy river.

You can choose between tour boat and speedboat; I much prefer the tour boat! The islands are all pretty much the same anyway: OK beaches with seafood restaurants, coconut stands, and maybe a cocktail bar, plus weirdly contrived instagram stations and sun loungers costing $1-2 whether or not you buy a drink. Less than a month later, I did not even remember how many islands there were, much less any differences between them.

I appreciated the dedication to keeping me consistently buzzed, loved the packs of beach dogs, and was very amused by the trend among Vietnamese couples and families to wear matching tropical print ensembles for their photo shoots. That said, none of this is worth rushing towards in a cramped speedboat! The chill experience of sunbathing and napping and having lunch on the slow boat is far superior.

Lunch is included on the slow boat, and it’s pretty good: shrimp, fried tofu, fish soup, veggies and rice. Pretty early in the morning they offer up a variety of shellfish you can have barbecued and served with your lunch (for an additional cost). I didn’t order anything because it was too early in the morning, and the thought of seafood made me feel a bit nauseous. I regretted it! The prices were fair and the selection was the freshest, most exotic stuff, including a variety of bigger snails that are hard to find on local menus, sea urchins, and horn scallops.

Snorkeling was for maybe 30 or 40 minutes between two of the islands. A lot of the coral was bleached and there weren’t a ton of fish; visibility was OK but it wasn’t very colorful! However, I love swimming and snorkeling so for me it was a nice part of the trip.  

I’m no connoisseur of amusement parks or water parks, I find them a bit scary to be honest! There were definitely sufficiently frightening water slides for adults and big enough safe play zones for kids. I found myself *considering* a couple of the more precipitous water slides. I’m working on recognizing my feelings of anxiety and converting them to feelings of excitement, but got stuck picturing my lovely teeth cracking out of my mouth in some catastrophic accident. To be clear, I don’t think this is likely at all! Everything seemed very new, safe, and well-maintained . . . I’m just a work in progress!

The cable car was actually the most expensive and anticlimactic part of the trip. I think the cable car ticket alone is $20 or more. It was lovely, I guess I just enjoy being on the water more. There’s also nothing to do at either station (just overpriced souvenir shops), and you can get much better footage of the islands with a drone.

The evening squid fishing, available as a separate tour or as an add-on for $15, was a terrible disappointment. It was just another couple hours on the tour boat, not far offshore, with insufficient lighting to attract squid, and hand reels! My grandfather taught me how to fish with a pole as a 6 year old, I had never even touched a hand reel before. Needless to say, no one caught anything and there were some really disappointed dudes there. Dinner was also pretty terrible shrimp congee with very little shrimp. I can't recommend it!

All in all though, I had an excellent time and would do the same tour again.  To state the obvious, don’t do it on a rainy day!