Vietnam: Ha Long Bay

Once we got to Hanoi the first thing we were trying to do is to get to Ha Long Bay. There are many tours going some of them for 2 days ( staying 1 night on the boat ) three days ( 1 night on the boat and one night in a hotel ). We learned that it is not really possible to do Ha Long Bay in one day as it is about 4 hours away from Hanoi.

We talked to the receptionist at our hotel and she recommended Amigo Cruise to us she could also book it for us and just add it to the final invoice. The trip was kind of expensive it costed us $84 per person. There are many tours on offer some of them are cheaper some even more expensive but I think this was a very good trip to pick.

The trip started at 8.00 when they picked us up at the hotel and drove to Ha Long Bay City. As I previously mentioned it took around 4 hours with one 20 minutes stop on the way. In Ha Long Bay City we were taken to the harbour and transported to our boat with a speedboat. Now looking at all the other boats doing the same journey this was one of the best and most spacious with a lovely sundeck on top of the boat. The trip included food and entry fees but not the drinks.

We later learned that we were not allowed to drink our own booze on the boat so much so that for every can of beer we were supposed to pay $1 and for a bottle of wine something like $8 “service charge”. Needless to say that every drink on the boat was seriously overpriced… meaning at least 3 times the price 🙂 This resulted us and a couple of other people having a house party at someone’s room 🙂

The tour itself was the best tour we had so far. Ha Long Bay is amazing, breathtaking and if you look at the photos you are not even close to the experience being there. This is definitely a must for ever traveller! Part of the tour was to visit a very nice cave and kayak around the cliffs this was all a lot of fun and sleeping on a boat was an excellent experience especially waking up and seeing the scenery.

I can only recommend this tour and area, you will not be disappointed a couple of remarks though:

I am just wondering when Vietnamese will figure out that tripling the price of drinks on the boat will not make westerners buy more will actually made me buy absolutely nothing from them.

There are many floating sellers boating from one ship to the other which means you can still buy anything you want from them for half the price… then again if the prices on the boat would be OK these guys wouldn’t be around and everyone would have left the trip a lot more happier…