LdyDDS

I did Reef Magic in December. It is fun and very good for novice swimmers or snorkelers. Highly recommend it.

I just returned from Sydney. I don't know which tour I took but it was just a main tour that showed us several of the theaters. It lasted just over 1 hour and was very good. I bought the tickets online and they were less expensive than buying them in person. I recommend the tour.

Thanks for the help and the link. It was so easy and only $20 per person. When I went on the Aus Embassy site without this link it was NOT easy to navigate and from the chart I clicked on it looked like the visa would cost something like $135 per person. THANK YOU again!

Hi

 

We'll be heading to HK this spring. You posted on another thread that you arranged a tour for Hong Kong. How did your tour turn out and would you mind sharing the contact info for the guide?

 

Thanks.

 

Bev

I arranged a private 3 day (2full days, one evening) walking tour of HK through Toursbylocals.com. Our tour guide was Jacky W. He was a very nice guy in his 20's who spoke prefect english. He did everything he said he would and was never late, and never rushed us. I liked him. We toured with 2 other coulple from our ship. One couple didn't like him and the other couple though soso. Check out toursbylocals.com. Most tour guides in HK do not have cars. We took all kinds of public transportation and I loved it. We would never have seen all the stuff on our own and would not have known to go to most of the places he took us to.

I think your family will like this tour. Can your 10 year old reach pedals on a 26" bike?....they will lower the seat for you.

No helmets necessary. Several families were on the tour and no one wore helmets. Mostly on back roads with little traffic and any traffic there is will be motor bikes/ motor cycles that go slowly.

I took this exact tour in December from the Millennium. It was a lot of fun and would do it again. They told me we would ride for 5 miles. I estimate that it was about 2 miles flat and scenic. We were bused for about an hour to pick up the bikes. They are not the best. In OK repair but not good. No helmets. The bike guys will adjust the seat height for you but not handle bars. You follow the tour guide in a long single file line on a paved path in the countryside. We made short stops at a pre school (really fun) and a private home on the way to Hoi An. We dropped off the bikes there and followed the tour guide for about 15 minutes to a restaurant for lunch. He pointed out things to us on the way to the restaurant but we did not have time to stop and really see anything. The lunch was very good but took a long time. We were told to meet at the bus at about 2pm which, if we stayed for the entire lunch would have given us only about 10 minutes to look around the town so I left before the dessert and had about 30 minutes to walk through the town. It is a cute town and would have like to see more of it but I REALLY like the bike ride and am glad I did the tour. On the way back to the ship the bus stopped for about 15 minutes at China Beach so we could watch the fishermen repairing the nets, etc. We also made a stop at the marble factory store which was a waste of time. All in all it was a pretty good value since it included the transportation, short tour, bike ride, school and home stop and really good lunch and stop at China Beach. I do believe a good time was had by all.

I REALLY do hope you have a better ship than we did. We DID have a great time due to the other cruisers on the ship....a really fun bunch. We LOVED all the private tours we did and had great experiences with the 2 tours we did through the ship.....Bicycle in Hoi An and Night Safari in Singapore. We also chose this ship for the ports not for the ship. Many of the cruisers on our voyage were seasoned Celebrity Cruisers and very disappointed with the cruise and voiced their opinions VERY LOUDLY. I thought they were really a bit obnoxious to the crew since it was a management problem really, not a crew problem. With that said....Celebrity has had a few weeks to spruce up the ship, retrain the staff, etc and hopefully you will have a better ship experience than we did. We do not regret doing the itinerary but REALLY regret doing it with Celebrity. This was our first exposure to Celebrity.....NOT impressed and won't be back with them but will probably travel with some of the people we met on the ship. As a thank you from Celebrity for sailing with them.....their apology was to send us a $50 certificate to sail with them again before April......NOT going to happen! I hope you have a fun time...you will... they are great cities to explore.

When I said "it was a mess" I was not just talking about BKK. I meant the whole cruise....bad service, less than tasteful food, ship in poor repair, poor entertainment, etc. I had fun because of the nice people I met aboard the ship and the people I toured with but I will NEVER sail with Celebrity again.

you might want to read the last page or 2 of the millennium roll calls from December. Both sailings did this itinerary. I was on Dec. 9th sailing......it was a mess.

I arranged 2 6person tours through Zoom. Saigon and Hanoi. The vans were large but REALLY uncomfortable. The guides (who are freelance guides) were very nice and knowledgable but since they are young they had no info on how Viet Nam has changed since the American war...could not answer our questions. Be sure to go over the itinerary carefully. In Saigon the guide omited several sites on the tour for no apparent reason. In Hanoi we thought the Hanoi Hilton was on the tour but apparently it wasn't so we had to pay an extra $5per person on the spot. Mr. Zoom was nice but seemed only concerned about collecting our money. If I go back I will not book again with Zoom...probably try Smile