It's not necessary to book your tour ahead & the best way was & still is to just pop into the cafe a day or so ahead & you'll be fine.  Unfortunately, the internet is full of scare tactics about how you won't get on the tour, Ha Long Bay is really busy at that time of year, the sky's falling etc, etc.

 BUT, since we've had so many people wanting to do it we've decided to cave in & accept bookings over the internet.

To book your tour with us please contact us by email.  All we require is your arrival details, the hotel your staying in & approx what time you'll be able to come over & pay for your tour. We'll hold your spots until an agreed to time & that's that. Don't send us or anyone else your Credit Card Number & please, be very careful about that. Viet Nam is awash with CC scams.

We find it quite unbelievable that our competitors would try something as stupid as this forced tipping scam on in the 1st place.  Not just do they order their customers to pay extra at the end of a trip but they even tell them how much they have to pay.  What must that be like ... Yes sir, thanks for the lousy trip, how much do I have to give you now sir .... YUK, YUK & YUK !!!

The honest thing would be for the boss of the tour company to tell the customers at the time of booking just how many extra payments they'd have to make, why they'd have to make them & exactly how much they'd have to pay.  

BUT, the greedy tour company boss would have to be honest and.... well ...... let's face it ..... that's not going to happen. 

And,  why don't the tourists have a go at the grub running the tour company & tell them to pay their workers a decent wage !  Well ...... let's face it ..... that's just not going to happen either. 

The whole compulsory tipping thing stinks, it's expensive (usually $15 - 20 USD per day) & is just a cheap, nasty scam to raise the price of the tour without telling you, no more no less !!!

Lastly, do Vietnamese people usually tip ? Rarely & they'd NEVER tip if someone told them to.

* NOTE: If you're using your work computer please be aware that most work places don't approve of their staff surfing the net, visiting funny web sites or arranging their holidays etc during work hours.  We've had a number of people complain they didn't hear from us when in fact it was their company system deleting our e-mails because we'd sent the people tour itineraries as attachments.  The various work places are understandably concerned that the attachments may be a virus or some other kind of nightmare that goes with the internet these days & delete them immediately.  When you contact us, please include an e-mail address that accepts any & all attachments such as your home or private e-mail address.

At this time, we can't reply/send email to any Hotmail accounts, the emails just keep bouncing back to us.  We know that the Hotmail outfit gets millions of spam emails each day to the millions of "free" email accounts they have & so the filtering they use has to be very strong to try & protect them & their customers.  We don't have any problems with any of the other "free" email services like Gmail, Yahoo, Lycos etc but can see that there may come a time when we will. Our best advice is that there's nothing better than a real email account. At about $2 a week, it's not a bad idea.  We know it's old fashioned, but the most effective form of communication is, was & always will be the spoken word it's still really worth a try. 

* For a $1 or $2, 'phone us here at the café if there's anything you feel is urgent. The number's below.