Cu Lao Cham Tour, Quang Nam Province, Vietnam

1Trang N 5:00 PM Jun 24, 2018

Don’t do it!
The island itself is pretty with fine sand and lots of palm trees... but getting there on a tour is ridiculous. First off, it’s so inefficient that EVERYONE arrives and does EVERYTHING at the same time. So everything is chaotic. From the check in to the departure. Upon arriving at the site, you have to push through extremely aggressive vendors and other tourists to get to the registration area. That immediately made a bad impression. But then the poor experiences just continued throughout the entire tour. You first have to make a stop at some place with a museum and market. But it was so packed that we barely got to see one room of the museum, and then left. The market itself had great fresh seafood like grilled octopus and cuttle fish, but again, packed and no where to sit. A vendor got pissed that we sat on her chairs but bought drinks from another vendor... Then everyone arrived at the island and fought for changing facilities or lounge chairs. The snorkeling sucked because you don’t get a snorkel, just a mask. The coral and fish sightings were just mediocre. Finally, the part that annoyed me the most and was my inspiration to write this review. After eating a pretty “Meh” lunch, we wanted to sit down on the beach to relax a bit amongst the 800 other guests (children running around, adults speaking loudly)only to find that the chairs we set down earlier were taken. So we had to find new ones. You’re limited to the space within a small area based on which restaurant your tour guide selected. We ended up sitting next to a small group of the tour boat staff who started gambling. The gambling group grew larger and louder by the minute. Within 10 minutes, it grew to over 10 men who were smoking, cussing, hollering all while guests were trying to “relax”. Needless to say, there was absolutely nothing relaxing about that tour. I will never do it again. If you could get a private boat to get you to the island when these tours weren’t around, it might be worth it. But then you’ll still have to put up with a thousand people interrupting your midday rest when the tours do come.

1jennifer G 5:00 PM Sep 28, 2018

Terrible tour
We have done this a couple of years ago and loved it, so with our friends we signed up for a fast boat ride and snorkelling with lunch for 60000 dong each. Boat trip was fine with no commentary then we met a young lady with limited English at the wharf which was packed with huge bags of rubbish, who guided us through a museum and a pagoda. I bought some lovely shells at the markets, then we headed out with a boatload of swimmers to ‘snorkel’. We were given old rubber masks which didn’t even fit, with no snorkel to paddle around on top of some pretty insipid looking coral for 30 mins. Then taken back to the town for lunch at 11.15 am which was ok. No choices, just about 5 plates plonked in front of us. So we finished at 11.45am and we were told the boat would take us back to the mainland at 1.30pm. What to do now? We were told we could go upstairs and have a sleep on some pretty uncomfortable looking chairs, or we could swim in the smelly rubbish strewn main beach. Yuk!! So we sat around in 30+ degree heat, waiting for the boat. So different from what I remember a couple of years ago, where we relaxed under palm trees and swam in pristine waters around the corner from the town. Be careful what you sign up for!!