What are the similarities
and differences between a European river cruise
and a Mekong river cruise?
I'm Gary Bembridge.
This is another of my cruising tips for travellers.
I'm currently cruising onboard CroisiEurope Indochine II
down the Mekong and I want to share with you things
that struck me that are the same and different
from going on a European river cruise starting
with this one.
The first key difference is the ships themselves,
they certainly look very different
and they are usually much smaller.
So the Indochine II for example, has 31 cabins, 62 guests.
Whereas if you go on a European river cruise
you would normally expect the river boats there
to hold between about 150 and 200 passengers.
So the ships are definitely much smaller.
They certainly look very different from the outside.
They tend to be much taller because they're not constrained
by the bridges in Europe.
And of course by definition
cause they're smaller, they are shorter.
The other key difference is they look very different.
So the river cruise ships in the Mekong tend
to have a sort of a colonial style
and look to them from the outside.
So they do look very different.
However, where they are similar is once you are inside.
So there the decor is different again,
often harking back to that colonial look and feel.
Like other river cruise ships in Europe, the facilities are
very similar and of course relatively limited
because of the size of the ships.
So for example on the Indochine II we had a sundeck,
here they actually had a plunge pool,
and some river boats in Europe have those as well.
Lots of space to sit outside,
there was a lounge,
which has a bar which is where you have your briefings,
and that's the real sort of social heart of the ship.
You then have a restaurant,
which is open seated dining,
open three times a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
It had a massage room on board this ship, of course,
some ships in Europe will have a fitness centre
or a similar kind of facility.
So you'll find once you're inside,
the ships are pretty similar in terms of the range
of facilities but they certainly look very different
and are much smaller.
Another area where they are pretty similar
is when it comes to fares.
River cruising generally is pretty all-inclusive
and the Mekong river cruises are similar
to the European river cruises in that respect.
So for example they include your accommodation
as you would expect,
they include all your meals.
So breakfast for example,
on Indochine II, was a buffet breakfast.
Lunch was buffet lunch, they had a cooking station as well.
Dinner was a full served meal
with starter, soup, main course choice
of a meat dish or chicken dish, vegetable dish
and a dessert.
24 hour tea and coffee was all included
that was self-served.
Wi-Fi of course being on the rivers like in Europe
it was a little bit more erratic
but it was included in the fares.
All excursions are included.
So in everywhere you stopped,
there was an excursion included.
The key exclusions were gratuities,
which of course, are optional.
If you have something like a massage,
or buy something in a little shop on board.
And then of course drinks.
If you had those extra drinks at the mealtime
or at other times throughout the cruise.
So very, very similar to river cruising, you know,
where you'll largely find all-inclusive fares
where depending on the cruise line, slight variances
and differences between how much drink is
or isn't included.
Exclusions would be things like airfares,
as well and transfers although of course,
you can bundle those to get the same
as you can do with European river cruising.
So the fares are pretty similar
and they're structured similar.
When I look at the price of going
on a cruise in Europe per day
and look at the price of going
on the Mekong per day, the prices were relatively similar.
Of course, the big real difference is you have the flight
to Asia, which of course if you're coming
to a European river cruise from the U.S. you have
that flight cost anyway of a long-haul flight.
The next area, is one that I perhaps hadn't really expected
to be quite as similar but was incredibly similar
and that's the basic format of the cruise.
That may make sense of course
because the format may work no matter
where you are in the world if you're on a river cruise.
So you're normally having the evening
before you get to a port
you have some sort of a port briefing,
you might have after dinner, some informal entertainment,
which might just be a film, perhaps a dance troupe
or musical group come on board.
Morning, you'll have some sort of announcement,
you'll have breakfast.
You then will head off on an excursion
which is included.
You normally head back for lunch,
and either be cruising the afternoon
or go on another excursion.
And you'll normally also be docking
or mooring somewhere in the evenings.
So very, very, very similar process.
It's relatively structured like river cruising in Europe.
So the day is pretty laid out,
so when you look at the daily programme.
there's not lots of choices of optional things to do.
Everyone does the same thing at the same time.
And it's pretty structured as per in Europe.
So the format very similar.
One of the key differences, though,
was what you find in Europe is the ships
normally will cruise along
and more typically in the evenings,
they'll often be moored in one of the towns,
right up in the towns,
you can walk up in the evening and go out.
What I found on the Mekong is most of the evenings,
we would stop sailing at some point in time,
and we'd be moored in the middle of the river,
rather than actually in a local village or town.
And the only places that we moored were
in the big cities like Phnom Penh, for example.
So overall the format
and the structure is very, very similar between the two.
The next thing I want to talk about is excursions.
As I mentioned,
it's quite normal for both European river cruises
and Mekong river cruises to have excursions included.
But what I found though is actually
what the excursions focus on is surprisingly similar
though what you're seeing is very different.
And there are probably four key things
that I observed that on both the European river cruise
and on the Mekong that you're likely to go and see.
The first of those is you're going to go
and see the iconic sites in major cities.
The same as you would do within Europe
or you'd here on the Mekong.
So in Ho Chi Minh City
and in on Phnom Penh you're going to head off
and see all the key sites in Ho Chi Minh City.
You're going to go and see things
like the town hall, the opera house,
the Notre Dame, the old Post Office in Phnom Penh.
You're going to go
and see the Royal Palace, the Silver Pagoda.
So all of those big classic sites in the big cities,
you're going to go and see the same
as you would do in Europe.
So that's one key thing called the big cities
and the iconic sites.
The second group of excursions are once you head out
into the smaller towns or villages,
where these excursions tend to focus much more
on how people live.
So you might go to farms,
you might get handicrafts, produce markets,
and you get a slice of how people live.
So on the Mekong for example,
we went to lots of local markets,
we went to see lots of crafts people making pottery
or honey products or wood carving or palm sugar.
And the same on excursions when you're in Europe.
I've been to various farms, so you go to home visits.
Where you get and you go to factories
where people make handicrafts.
So sending anybody into smaller villages,
it's very much focused around the culture
and how people live.
The third type of excursion are going
to historically significant places.
So in Europe, you'll go to all the places
where big major historical events have happened
in that particular country in that particular place.
The same is true in the Mekong.
So we went to for example in Ho Chi Minh
you're likely to go to the Cu Chi tunnels,
which is where the Viet Cong operated just outside
of Ho Chi Minh City during the Vietnam War.
You're going to explore those
and learn more about the Vietnamese war.
In Cambodia, in Phnom Penh you'll go
to prison S-21 section 21,
which was an old secondary school which was converted
into a torture centre where people were imprisoned.
They were tortured and eventually sent off
to the killing fields.
And again, you'll learn all about Cambodian history.
So again, a common theme
that I found across the two is visiting
really important historical sites.
The fourth area is whether you're in Europe
or whether you're in on the Mekong you're going
to go visit a lot of religious centres.
So obviously in Europe,
you're going to visit cathedrals and big churches.
What you do on the Mekong, is you go and visit temples
or as they call them here pagodas.
And we went to see some amazing
and beautiful pagodas and temples.
My favourite probably was the Tay An Pagoda
in Chau Doc in Vietnam,
which had these incredibly intricate statues.
There was the white Kampong Trach layer,
where we went to on ox carts, a very old pagoda built
in the late 1800s.
And then we also went to of course, Angkor Wat,
which is the big famous World Heritage Site
with incredibly beautiful
and amazing temples, now of course, ruins.
Another area that is actually,
I think quite different is around how busy things are.
If you head down the rivers in Europe,
they are incredibly busy,
particularly the Rhine and the Danube.
And often you'll see loads of ships sailing past you
as you head up and down.
And often when you're docking in many
of the key places the ships are
often docked next to each other and backed up.
So lots of people, lots of tours out in town.
Sailing on Mekong that's very, very different.
We did see one or two other ships along the way,
but for most of the time,
we felt like we were the only passenger ship on the Mekong.
So you don't, when you get off
at different stops see loads of other tour parties.
The only time that we saw more tour parties were
for example in Phnom Penh because many
of the cruises will stay more than one night,
so there's more of a chance to see people.
So definitely it feels much,
much quieter on the river
and it feels a little bit more special
and a little bit more unique.
Another key area which
I think is broadly similar is the passengers.
So the passenger mix on the Mekong does seem
to be a very similar passenger mix
to those on European river cruises.
So it does tend to be a little bit older.
You have people who are 50, 60, 70 years.
Lots of couples travelling together.
The ships are designed for a couple's experience.
I actually came on this as a solo passenger
and I was the only solo passenger on board
it was mostly couples.
Of course there are some extended groups
and sometimes bigger groups of people
who were travelling together I guess,
through a travel organisation or a group.
So very much the same sort of passenger,
again, quite a diverse mix beyond cruising Europe.
It tends to have a much more European focused passenger mix.
So there was French, there was some Spanish,
there was English speaking people, mostly from the UK,
there's some Japanese English speaking.
Of course, once you head into other cruises
you're going to find
perhaps more Americans, Canadians and Australians,
so very, very similar mix to European river cruising.
A river cruise in Europe, a river cruise in the Mekong
both are incredible experiences for different reasons.
I loved my time in the Mekong and was quite surprised
cause I hadn't expected quite so many similarities
to the way that European river cruises run
and the way the Mekong river cruise runs.
Hope you've found that interesting and helpful
I have loads more videos
about river cruising, Mekong River cruising, ocean cruising,
so why don't you watch another one of those right now?