Trung Trang Cave + Bamboo Airways – Day 22 – Agoda Issues on Halong Bay to Hanoi to Phu Quoc Route
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Creator's Key Takeaways
The drone was working fine and then all of a sudden just wigged out and went said some sort of error on on little little computer AI voice said a little said something something error.
I can absolutely vouch for the two-day experience. I think that's it's worth the investment. You get so much more out of the experience.
They're trying to charge us 350 bucks more, which was more than a quarter of the cost of the whole 5 days.
I'm just looking at it just going how is this a fivestar resort experience?
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Our last morning in Lan Ha Bay takes us through Trung Trang Cave on Cat Ba Island before a drone crash over Halong Bay, a Bamboo Airways flight to Phu Quoc, and Agoda issues at the Best Western Premier. On Day 22, everything seemed to go wrong - and somehow still came good. This Vietnam with kids diary picks up on our last morning in Lan Ha Bay, the quieter neighbour of Halong Bay, before a long mixed-mode travel day carried us by road to Hanoi and then down to Phu Quoc on Bamboo Airways. The morning started beautifully and unravelled fast. I took the drone up for sunrise over Halong Bay and got some of the best footage I've ever shot from 500 metres up - then the drone threw an error mid-flight and dived straight into the ocean. Brand new, eighteen hundred dollars, and every frame of that Halong Bay drone footage went down with it. A brutal way to start, and a reminder of why travel insurance earns its place on a trip like this. From there we crossed to the northern end of Cat Ba Island for Trung Trang Cave, tucked inside Cat Ba National Park. I take you on a Trung Trang Cave guide, where you trek up through the jungle, climb the cliff face, and enter a cave that burrows around 300 metres clean through the mountain. Expect tight passages, plenty of crawling, big open chambers full of oddly shaped stalactites and stalagmites, and a bat or two that set the kids off. The cave served as a field hospital and bomb shelter during the Vietnam War, so there's real history threaded through the adventure. It capped two nights and three days in Lan Ha Bay, and if you're weighing one night or two, or Halong Bay versus Lan Ha Bay, I'd back the two-day option every time at Lan Ha Bay. It's less crowded, easier to get around, far more rewarding, and you see so much more. Then the travel-day gremlins arrived. We'd booked last-minute flights from Hanoi to Phu Quoc after hearing central Vietnam was flooding (it wasn't, which stung - I'd wanted to show the kids Hue). The booking kept erroring out, so we ended up on Bamboo Airways - often mistyped as Bamboo Airlines - which despite the odd name was genuinely great: cheap, comfortable, better than other budget carriers we've flown. The catch: those errors charged the card three times, another seven hundred dollars to chase down later. The day's biggest blow waited at the other end. Our Agoda booking for the Best Western Premier Phu Quoc came through wrong - four adults instead of three adults and two kids - leaving us a bed short of the three-bedroom suite we'd booked for five nights. The resort wanted a few hundred dollars more for a spare bed, the room didn't match the Agoda photos, and my youngest ended up on a hard rattan couch. Tally it - drone, airline charges, room mess - and it was close to four thousand dollars gone in a single day. But here's the part that matters: I didn't spiral. After the year we've had with the house fire, handling a day like this calmly felt like its own small win. Wellness travel isn't all spas and massages, it's regaining mental health. The card charges look sortable, insurance should cover the drone, and the room gets fixed tomorrow. This is the emotional side of family travel - real problems, real recovery, and the reset that follows. A Trung Trang Cave tour, things to do on Cat Ba Island, a Bamboo Airways flight, an Agoda lesson learned, and a five-star Phu Quoc resort that tested our patience. Contents 00:00 Ha Long Bay to Phu Quoc 00:40 Waking Up the Kids 02:37 Breakfast 03:00 Lan Ha Bay Drone Crash 04:12 Cat Ba National Park 04:29 Trung Trang Cave 06:21 Ha Long Bay vs Lan Ha Bay Verdict 06:57 Ha Long Bay to Hanoi 08:09 Hanoi to Phu Quoc 08:59 Bamboo Airlines Worth It 10:32 Agoda Booking Problems 11:02 Best Western Phu Quoc Review 13:00 Room Problems 14:03 Travelling with Kids 17:32 Staying Calm About The Motivated Travel Show: Family travel told honestly - the highs, hard days, and recovery in between. Hosted by award-winning journalist Chris Stead, the channel follows our family through wellness-anchored, real-world travel with kids, including the backpacking and the reviews. Day 22 is part of our Season 1: Southeast Asia journey, telling the story of healing from a house fire through travel across Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. ◀ Previous episode (Day 21): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymgll0Ggn38 #vietnamtravel #travelvlog #familytravel #travelwithkids #backpacking