Beautiful ship and excellent service. A few issues that I have been communicated to L’amour management already and I am writing this review to help others not have the same experience I did.
1. You must send your passport info to the port authority at least 3 days in advance before you sail. I booked my cruise less than 24 hours before the cruise departed and if bot for our hotel reception knowing who to call, we may have been refused entry to the cruise. Trip.com did NOT flag this for us, nor did L’amour. I happened upon it only because I read the whole booking, which I often don’t. This was my 11th accommodation booking in 3 weeks, so I often don’t read all the fine print. This needs to be highlighted by both the cruise and the online booking platform.
2. There is no office where you check in. The guide with a clipboard and some chairs in an unmarked area. Please confirm with L’amour to know exactly where you are to be dropped off. We showed our hotel reception our booking confirmation and she input our particulars into our Grab ride. Got us to the port, but not the right place. Had to panic call the tour guide on whatsapp to speak with the Grab driver to get instructions. Cost me another 100,000 dong and upset all of us.
3. Bad smell - really bad smell in the hallway and our room. Gave my daughter and I a terrible headache within minutes. Our tour guide offered to move us to another room and their maintenance person offered to spray deodorizer to mask the smell, which we declined. Left the window wide open for a few hours and smell improved. Management promised to investigate and deal with the problem, so going forward, hopefully no more passengers will remark on this problem.
L’amour staff and management are great and really committed to customer happiness. They try very hard and the ship is beautiful. One more small point, coffee, tea, juice, water and soft drinks should be free, you pay enough for the cruise, I don’t feel it’s right to charge additional for non alcoholic drinks.