I was looking at the Sinhcafe website (the original one) and apparently you can book guided tours for a day in Saigon or a day to visit Cu Chi Tunnels and Cao Dai Temple for 5-6 dollars each.
Is this too little???
This is the website: Ho Chi Minh City - Sinhcafe Tour
Has anyone booked guided tours w/ Sinhcafe? I know their open tours are quite recommended but I don't know about the guided tours...
It says tour cost includes : Bus, guide but at the price of 5 bucks, I'm not sure what the quality is like.
Any thoughts?
Or can someone recommend me a tour for Cu Chi and Saigon etc. ? I heard you can register with a tour agency on Pham Ngu Lao street in HCMC but with so many tour agents around, I don't know who to choose!
Please let me know!
Thanks so much! Tips much much appreciated!
Hi There,
We did the Cu Chi tunnels and a Mekong Delta day tour with Sinhcafe, they were very cheap and they were great!
Your web link didn't work but it looks like the real sinhcafe the address we went to to book was 246-248 DeTham, Q1, Ho Chi Minh City. Tel: (08) 8367338 - 8376833.
We were also amazed how cheap they were. We paid an extra dollar and they picked us up directly from our hotel!
Enjoy! :-)
Sinh Cafe link works kind of funny though. Whenever you add anything after .com, the link won't work.
I took a Sinh Cafe tour of the Cu Chi tunnels a few weeks ago, from the real Sinh Cafe.
The time we were at the tunnels was probably about 60 minutes, maybe a bit longer. It seemed a bit rushed, and we skipped a few things it seemed like. The tour guide was what I expected, he explained a bit, spoke understandable English, etc. The tour bus was one of the big ones, and though the air conditioning was okay on the way out, the guy didn't turn it on the way back (to save gas) and it was HOT. Some people complained and he claimed it was 'broken' but I seriously doubt that.
But, remember you have to pay the admission fee at the Tunnels too, I forget how much, about five bucks. So you're paying for a bus trip and a guide, and that's why it's so cheap, it's split over 50 or so people. And bus travel seems cheap, you can get a maybe-airconditioned bus from Hanoi to Hue, for example, for about the same price, and that's like a five hour trip.
Rabidstoat is correct about why the price is so cheap. Sin Cafe tours have A LOT OF PEOPLE. Thus you will get almost nothing from the guide. However, if you do not care about having a guide, it is a good value.
Took a Sinh cafe one day tour last week that included the Cu Chi Tiunnels and the Cao Dai Temple in Tay Ninh, near the Cambodian border. Rabidstoat is right about having to pay the entrance fee to the tunnels, which was 80,000 Dong ($5). But the guide was good (he spoke excellent English) and the bus was clean and modern with good A/C. We wer also on our own for lunch but we wnet to a decent restaurant where I got a good meal for about $1.25. All in all I thought it was a great value for the money.
Do be careful, however, if you go to Hanoi and use Sinh Cafe. Sinh owns the copyright for that name from Hue to the southern tip of VN, but apparently there are no copyright laws in Hanoi so there are a lot of copycat Sinh Cafes (85 ciopycats and one legitimate one, to be exact), and many of the copycats are ripping people off. Even if you do manage to find the right Sinh Cafe (and I did), the quality of tours are hit and miss because they sub-contract everything out in Hanoi. I had a one day city tour that absolutely fell apart and after much haranguing with the manager we got $5 each back. On the ther hand, I had a one-day Halong Bay trip that was quite good. The Halong Bay trip was sub-contracted thru Khanh Sinh Travel, located at 61 Hang Buom St. in Hanoi, so I would probably consider booking directly through them next time, although I have also heard Handspan is a good company.
All depends on the guide. Some are rush-through guys who know little and don't care much, others are great. I went with TNK Travel a few months ago and the guide had been a former South Vietnamese soldier and had lots of interesting things to say, if you ask.
If you take these cheap trips, you have to pay entrance at the tunnels by the way (about $4).
Hey everyone thanks for the tips! I guess I'll just read up on the places before booking. I'm travelling on a budget after all and it's Sinhcafe it is!
Cheers everyone! I suppose booking online and giving them credit card details is OK? I've always heard good reviews about this company (the real one).
Oh ya and sorry about the broken link. My bad....
We booked Cu Chi tunnels with Delta Adventure Tours - around US$5 - had a great time - our guide made it - he was a former South Vietnamese who worked as an interpreter with US 101st Airborne; was 're-educated' afetr the war; had a breakdown so disappeared into the jungle for 2 years to get his head right - now he is at peace and so down on war in general.
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