28 Day Grand Southeast Asia (SIN-SIN)

[RetiredandTravel]

We are considering the Seabourn 28 Day Grand Southeast Asia Cruise in January 2023.

 

https://www.seabourn.com/en_US/find-a-cruise/O3I28A/7311A.html

 

If anyone has taken this cruise or parts we would be interested in your impressions.

 

Its on the Encore.

 

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[Ka Honu]

We were on a similar 2019 cruise which was r/t Hong Kong (on Ovation) with most of the same stops. It was my first return to some of the places I'd spent a lot of time in back in the day (late 60s thru 90s) and was super interesting from that perspective. I could well have done without much of the Philippines and Sihanoukville (unless you take a side trip to Angkor Wat) but the rest was all pretty cool, largely depending on how much history you have with those places. Highlights were Hong Kong (just before the recent political upheaval), Vietnam, Singapore, and Bangkok and worth the effort of wandering about (if you're familiar with the area) or finding "custom" tours to go where you want to go instead of where the generic tours take you.

 

Although it's a bit more complicated, if I had it to do over again I'd do it by land/air and spend more time in the places I really wanted to visit/revisit. That's not a slam on Seabourn - as always the cruise itself was wonderful; I just don't think they had the best itinerary in terms of ports and time ashore to meet my personal interests.

[CruiserfaeFife]

We did the first half of this route in reverse, ie Hong Kong to Singapore on Ovation in January 2020 - our first time with Seabourn and our first time in this region. We really enjoyed it and would certainly do it again. 
 

highlights were:

• the beach day at Ko Kood - much more than caviar in the surf, but book in advance if you want to use any of the water sports equipment
• visit to Hoi An - a fascinating old city
• Saigon - we overnighted there and in retrospect we weren’t adventurous enough. Another couple went on an evening food tour on the back of scooters which sounded great fun and safer than it sounds!
• Singapore - end of the road on our trip, we did a walking food tour with Secret Food Tours which was really interesting and generally loved the city

as the previous poster says, Sihanoukville is a “miss” unless you do the Angkor Wat trip which is a couple of nights off the ship - we treated it as a sea day. 

[RetiredandTravel]

Thank you for the responses.

 

"Ka Honu"  I'm interested in why you didn't like the Philippines.  Given "CruiserfaeFife"s feedback it may make more sense to just do a 14 day Thailand Vietnam ... cruise with a stay over in Singapore.  Probably not interested in  a Hong Kong stay over at this point.

 

 

 

 

[Fletcher]

Personally I'm not keen on the vast majority of these SE Asian cruises.  I think they are best suited to people for whom cruising is the main attraction, the ship itself, rather than where the ship goes.  That is especially true of these generally warm to hot cruises.  My reason for thinking like this is simple - ports are often far from the cities (Bangkok and Saigon for example); the cities themselves deserve much more than just a few hours; hotels and restaurants are outstanding in all these places; very often the major sightseeing attractions are inland (Angkor for example) and ships' excursions is not the best way to see them.

 

Expedition cruises around Indonesia and New Guinea can be fabulous and cruises from Hong Kong to Japan via the Ryuku Islands are also recommended.  Manila is hell on Earth but individual areas and islands of the Philippines can be outstandingly beautiful with gorgeous beaches. 

Edited April 30, 2021 by Fletcher

[CruiserfaeFife]

All fair points from Fletcher - we enjoyed it as an introduction to the region. One correction though - the Ovation was able to dock close to the centre of Saigon in our case.  Larger ships do have to dock some distance away - and may depend on tides of course.  Bangkok on the other hand was over an hour away by bus from the port so less convenient. 

[alidor]

I am kind of surprised that more cruise ships don’t use Klong Toey (spelling?) in Thailand for Bangkok.  We did an Asian cruise a few years ago On Azamara and they docked here.  Was only about 30 minutes from Bangkok.  I know only smaller ships can get in there, but there are enough out there that can probably use this one instead of the far away port.

[RetiredandTravel]

21 hours ago, Fletcher said:

Personally I'm not keen on the vast majority of these SE Asian cruises.  I think they are best suited to people for whom cruising is the main attraction, the ship itself, rather than where the ship goes.  That is especially true of these generally warm to hot cruises.  My reason for thinking like this is simple - ports are often far from the cities (Bangkok and Saigon for example); the cities themselves deserve much more than just a few hours; hotels and restaurants are outstanding in all these places; very often the major sightseeing attractions are inland (Angkor for example) and ships' excursions is not the best way to see them.

 

 

 

 

I appreciate everyone taking the time to write such thoughtful and knowledgeable responses.

 

 

"Fletcher" you hit on a very important decision to us which is cruising vs actual visiting (staying in a hotel).  Generally we prefer cruising to more geographically dispersed areas or where there are high language/cultural barriers(for us).  We are getting older and aren't as adventurous as we once where.   Cruising biggest shortcoming is lack of emersion into the cultures/food/vibe.   With the prices Seabourn charges one an stay in the best hotels and eat in top Michelin restaurants in most cities.  Interestingly Silverseas new SALT concept attempts to provide more emersion.

 

Don't get me wrong we do enjoy cruising to certain areas.

 

So cruising is currently of interest to us to SE Asia, Australia/NZ, Northern Europe primarily because of St Petersburg, South America/Antarctica and  the Greek Islands/Turkey/Israel.

 

 

 

 

 

[Qld13]

We did a similar cruise with Silversea and the only problem we had was coming from Australia we did not appreciate Hong Kong was in Winter so very cold to us from Australia and did not pack accordingly!!

[Fletcher]

Yes, another significant issue with these cruises is air pollution which reaches disgusting levels Nov-Feb in most of mainland China and that also affects HK.  Lousy for the lungs, lousy for the photography.

[RetiredandTravel]

"other than that how was the play Mrs Lincoln" 🙂

 

I think its also monsoon season in Singapore in January.  

 

I think its going to the bottom of the list.

 

thanks