Thinking of booking a cruise on Ha Long Bay? Here’s a review of our experience on our 2 Days, 1 Night cruise. 

Ha Long Bay is incredibly beautiful with limestone mountains towering over the turquoise water. If you’ve been researching Vietnam, it’s likely you’ll have seen photos of the bay as they really are a sight to see. The only way to see them is to book onto a cruise, but there are a few variations of cruises you can do. We booked a cheaper cruise as it fitted within our backpackers budget. 

Booking through our hostel made the most sense for us as we had booked a few other tours through them and they had been great. There are plenty of travel agents around to book the cruises, if you’re in Hanoi like we were, you’ll see signs for it every where. We paid around £100 each for our cruise with Cozy Bay Cruises and this included our transfers to the port and back to Hanoi after. Ha Long Bay is around 3 hours from Hanoi, so it is best to book onto the transfers when you arrange your cruise.  

As we’d booked a cheaper cruise my expectations were low, but I was pleasantly surprised. The transfer was a VIP minibus (not sure what that actually meant, but it was comfy and water bottles were given out!) and we arrived at the port in plenty of time. Unfortunately for us, we arrived typhoon warning, so we had to wait at the port for an hour extra for a decision to be made. Luckily, the weather never amounted to anything more than just rain and it actually brightened up, so soon enough we were on the tender over to the cruise boat. The boat was rustic and definitely not modern, the pictures were taken a LONG time ago, but she had character, it was clean and the staff were lovely. 

Once everyone was on board, the boat left the port quickly whilst we met the rest of our group and had the welcome talk. We had a lovely mix of ages, a couple of older ladies, 2 young backpackers, an American couple on their honeymoon and a german family with an adorable baby boy called Milo. The welcome talk was short, as we had had a brief overview when we arrived at the port, but our guide explained our itinerary again and as we listened we cruised through the first peaks of the bay. Our first meal was also as soon as we were setting off as we were behind schedule with the typhoon warning. Lunch was a selection of food such as spring and summer rolls, fresh prawns, dumplings and salads.

At the end of the welcome talk, we were given our room keys and had a few minutes to check our rooms out, dump our bags and re group. Our room was simple but clean and the bed was comfy. Had one large window, almost the size of the wall, which let most of the natural light in, but it was parallel to our bed so we wanted to keep it closed most of the time as we weren’t the last room on our side, so we had people walking past regularly. Our room also had an ensuite which I hadn’t really thought about but I was so relieved when I realised. 

The first stop on the cruise itinerary were the Surprising Caves or the traditional Vietnamese name, Sung Sot Caves. The huge caves have been claimed to be first  discovered in 1901 by the French, who named them surprising for their size and beauty. We explored the caves on foot with the guide who told stories of the caves discovery whilst we took a short walk through them. The caves were full of stalactites and stalagmites which has been growing for thousands of years and a few were pointed out where they had grown into shapes of animals or faces. 

From the caves, we continued on the cruise over to one of the islands in the bay which had a viewpoint at the top. It was a big climb, 458 steps, and as we didn’t have great weather I was a little unsure if we would have a good view. Thankfully, whilst it was overcast, it was a lot clearer than it had been and we could see out over the bay for quite some distance. Once we had descended, we had some free time before we had to be ready to get back on the tender and at this stop you could swim, so Mike took the opportunity to do so. It was incredibly salty and not the cleanest so he didn’t stay in for long. 

We didn’t have long at this stop, so soon enough it was time to get on the tender back to the boat. We had some ‘free’ time to shower and relax a little before a cooking class, followed by dinner and then drinks and drunken Karaoke, which was hilarious. 

Day 2 was an early morning and after last nights escapades, we definitely struggled with getting up. Breakfast was 7am sharp and ready for the days activities. The Pearl Farm was the first stop. We browsed and without the desire to buy anything, we headed out to participate in the main activity of day 2, kayaking. We had around an hour to explore the bay on the kayaks. As the water was really still, we managed to navigate ourselves easily and I found it really relaxing – not sure Mike found it as relaxing, as I spent most of the time taking pictures and taking in the views, so not much kayaking came from me. 

After finishing with the kayaks, it was time to get back on the boat and start heading back in the direction of the port. We had time to pack up and have lunch before we arrived back, ready to depart the boats and jump on the 3 hour transfer back to Hanoi. 

So this is was an overview of the trip, now it’s time for the good and the bad!

The Good

• The cruise tour guide was really nice, he knew a lot and was really funny. 
• For the price it was an ok deal on the boat and the food was surprisingly good, the bed was comfy and we slept well. 
• We met lovely people and had a hilarious time at the karaoke with those on our cruise. 

The Not So Good

• Ha Long Bay is a protected UNESCO site, but you wouldn’t necessarily know this, as the water was really dirty and there was so much litter. Bits of rubbish, including fishing nets, plastic bottles, wrappers and so many polystyrene boxes. We were really confused why there were so many polystyrene boxes floating around until we got to the pearl farm where they had stacks of them. It was such a shame to just see the water in such a state, when one of the beauties of Ha Long Bay is it’s water. 
• The tour itself wasn’t really two days, it was pretty much 3 activities which could have been done in 1 day and the kayaking was absolutely a tie on to the pearl farm, as well. So it felt really expensive for what was essentially a short cave walk, a viewpoint, a forced shopping experience and an hour of kayaking. Of course, we didn’t have high expectations and it was a bit of a tourist trap situation as we had found with a few of the excursions we had done in Vietnam.
• The whole trip to the pearl farm was just for people to spend more money too. Again, we understand people have to make their livings etc but you could tell that even our guide was uncomfortable when we arrived. He gave such a brief introduction and was eager for people to get onto the kayaks which made sense. What we saw of the pearl farm was just a fancy shop, besides the actually interesting 2 minute demonstration we saw of the pearl harvesting process and how they farmed the oysters. We did a courtesy walk around the shop but it wasn’t a relaxing look as every time you paused a member of staff was either there watching what you were looking at being overly helpful or looking down their noses at us. It was just a really uncomfortable situation. The shop did have which had truly beautiful pearls for sale, so if you are in the market for some jewellery with pearls directly harvested in Ha Long Bay then it’s a perfect place to buy.
• The whole of Ha Long was busy. All of the activities of the boat were on a strict schedule to fit all of the tourists through and so many of the boats moved around together so it didn’t really matter how much you paid for your cruise as you were all visiting the same places at the same times. 

We had originally had wondered if 2 Nights, 1 Day was enough, but I am not sure how many more activities are included to stretch the days out to make it worth it as every tour whilst we were there visited the same places we did, just in varying orders. So if you are debating visiting Ha Long Bay, I wouldn’t recommend doing any longer – unless you book a much fancier cruise boat, some of them had hot tubs or pools, then you might fancy splashing out on a snazzier cruise experience, but it’s unlikely your activity experience will be any different. 

From speaking to people in the Hanoi hostels and our trip to Sapa, we had been advised to visit Cát Ba instead of Ha Long. Cát Ba is very similar with the mountains in the water, beautiful sights, caves and endless turquoise water. Vietnam was our first proper stop in SE Asia and we had certain things on our list that we wanted to do, so we stuck with what we originally planned. We learnt as our travels went on, to listen to the people we met and their experiences. In a way I am glad we went to Ha Long Bay as we’ve seen it for ourselves, but mostly I wish we had been to Cát Ba instead. We couldn’t over look negatives of Ha Long Bay with the litter, the dirty water and the feeling that the whole cruise was just a bit of a scam. It really is just a real shame that such a beautiful part of Vietnam is not being looked after properly. Unfortunately, a lot of this was on us for going to Ha Long Bay and booking this tour when we could have researched a different option or we could have just listened to the people who recommended Cát Ba instead. So here I am, advising you, to look into the tour more than we did if you’re going to go to Ha Long Bay or actually consider going to Cát Ba instead. 

I really wanted to do a fair review of our Ha Long Bay experience, I can’t really sum it up more than that it wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t the best. Hopefully I’ve managed to give a good idea of what our experience was like and what we thought.

Hope this helps you make a decision on whether or not to visit and as always, thanks for reading!