I had a wonderful experience on the Marble Mountains & Monkey Mountains day trip with Simply Vietnam yesterday - would 100% recommend this tour for travelers in the Hoi An/Da Nang area!
Our group's guide was Quyen, and she was a fantastic host: very personable, engaging, and full of knowledge about the area. She was super friendly, and did an excellent job herding our group of 13 throughout the tour.
For the overall itinerary, I'd say this day trip also does a great job of keeping things organized and interested. They picked me up at my hotel right at the designated time, and the van was comfortable and spacious to fit the full group. There were 13 in our group altogether - a bit larger than some small-group tours I've taken, but still small enough that it felt intimate (and Quyen was very willing to answer any questions!)
The tour itself is a good mix of sites and activities - the Marble Mountains area is fascinating with both great views of Da Nang and the surrounding regions, as well as exploring local religious/Buddhist sites located within the mountain complex - the cave sites are really incredible. While there are a lot of steps, and it can be a bit of a workout, this tour should be very doable for anyone without significant mobility issues. The lunch (at a local home) was great as well.
One caveat: this area and these sites are very popular, and there were a lot of other tourists (and tour groups) there as well...though this makes me recommend Simply Vietnam's tour even more strongly, as having caught bits of some of the other tour guides' speeches, I felt like we were getting much more insight and information from Quyen than some of the bigger tours.
The 2nd site (Monkey Mountains) with the giant Lady Buddha was similarly gorgeous, and not too far of a ride from the lunch location. Overall, while there is a decent amount of car time to get to/from the sites it's broken up pretty well so it never felt like we were spending all day in the van.
Overall, despite not knowing much about these locations before booking, I'm very glad I took this tour, and its a great change of pace from Hoi An and the old town/beaches. I am still in the midst of a South-North trip through Vietnam - but I can say this tour was already one of my highlights!
