Great Expectations!
Halong Bay has been on our wishlist of places to visit for at least two years, so when we knew we were coming back to Vietnam this time, we booked this cruise 7 months in advance while we were still in Ecuador just to be sure we’d get exactly the cruise line we wanted and also so that we could reserve the particular room we desired on our ship. Halong Bay cruises are wildly popular with tourists and is one of the main tourist attractions in all of Vietnam, so we were both happy and thankful when our reservation was accepted and confirmed for our chosen cruise from 4/8 – 4/10/2024.
A quick Google search of “Halong Bay Cruises” will bring up a plethora of both cruises and cruise lines that offer tours of Halong Bay, most ranging from 1 to 3 days. All of them offer some type of excursions that will mostly include some kayaking and swimming, and all offer different levels of amenities and services depending on one’s budget.
Let me preface something before I mention prices. In Vietnam everything is extremely inexpensive, especially compared to prices in the West. My feeling is that everything here costs about 1/4 to 1/2 of what it would cost in the U.S. However, Halong Bay Cruises don’t fit this algorithm, at all! They are expensive and it’s really the first thing Michelle and I have done here that hasn’t felt like such a great deal. Our budget definitely took a hit! But we both knew that this was a once in a lifetime travel experience, so we loosened up, closed our eyes, and clicked the “purchase” button to reserve our cruise!
After watching several Youtube travel videos, we decided to book with “Mon Cheri Cruises” for a 2 night/3 day cruise. Michelle researched and scoured through their online reviews, and when we saw the room we were booking, we couldn’t have been more excited!
So we had great expectations for this adventure! But did it measure up, and would we do it again? In this blog, I am going to give our 3 day adventure an honest review to reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly of a Halong Bay Cruise. To do that, I’m going to rate the following:
- THE ROOM – Did our room live up to our expectations?
- HALONG BAY – Is it as stunning as it looks on Instagram?
- THE INCLUDED EXCURSIONS – Did they live up to the hype?
- THE SERVICE (to include dining options) – Was the service worth the money?
Cruise Day #1
Most tourists (Michelle and I included) who go on the Halong Bay cruise actually start their day in Hanoi, which is just a little over two hours from Halong Bay, so the cruise lines provide transportation (for a $20.00 per person fee each way) to the Halong Bay Marina. Our transportation arrived at our hotel in Hanoi at just a little after 8:00am. Our vehicle was a 10 passenger van and we stopped twice to pick up some other travelers who were staying close to us and then we proceeded to the marina. The ride was smooth and the roads were very good. We arrived at the Mon Cheri terminal at about 10:30am, paid the remainder of the balance we owed for the cruise and then waited for a smaller boat to take us out to the ship we were going to spend the next 2 nights on.
So, this is a good time to mention that pictures don’t always tell the whole story. Did you notice how everyone looks happy in the picture above and that, just looking at the picture, it would seem like this is one of those adventures that might be considered a “hallmark moment”? Well, it wasn’t really like that!
The scenery that we started seeing was beautiful as we made our way from the terminal out towards the bay. We both started to relax because we knew we’d made it on board and we looked forward to 3 days to simply rejuvenate and replenish our souls, surrounded by God’s beautiful creation. However…
Behind where Michelle and I were sitting was a very large family with lots and lots of kids who were playing a video game at its highest volume. Whatever video game it was required the kids to continuously tap and pound on the screen and yell and laugh at the top of their lungs. For the first 10 minutes, it was bearable. We really had no idea how long it would be before we reached our ship but we guessed that it wouldn’t be long. We were wrong! For 45 minutes these kids yelled at the top of their lungs, while beating on this video game that made the most annoying sounds, again playing at full volume! I turned around a few times to see why there seemed to be no parental guidance. The mystery was solved when I saw the parents sitting away from their kids, both with their faces fully enthralled with their phones. They weren’t even paying attention. More on these kids later…
After about 45 minutes, we arrived at our ship and were welcomed aboard by the crew who led us all into the dining room where a lunch buffet had been prepared and waiting for us. It was about 1:00pm. We were very hungry and the food was great! After that, we were given the key to our room and we had some time to relax and explore the ship.
Overall, we were very happy with what we saw! Our room was luxurious and the ship was large and didn’t feel crowded, but this was just a little deceiving as we learned later that day. Our tickets included a free 30 minute foot massage, so we indulged and it was so relaxing! We then went back to our room…and that’s when we noticed the noise. It sounded as if someone was riding a pogo stick across our ceiling, or there was some sort of clogging going on upstairs and they were wearing wooden shoes! After an hour, the nose didn’t stop and I couldn’t believe that we had paid this much money for a room that was this noisy! I called reception and complained about the noise and they were very responsive. The manager came to our room and explained that there were a lot of children on this cruise and that he would speak to their parents about trying to keep them from running around on the deck above us. The noise after this only got slightly better, but not for long, as it all started up again within a short time. It wasn’t until the last day of the cruise that I finally figured it out. Right above our room was the children’s play area, which meant that their floor was actually our ceiling and that’s what we were hearing. Thankfully it normally stopped after dinner, and was relatively quiet throughout the night. It was mostly an issue only in the afternoons.
The room itself was very nice, and we LOVED our balcony! One great thing about having this balcony besides being able to sit out and see the scenery was that periodically there would be a Vietnamese person with a small boat who would pull up along side our boat with various snacks and drinks for purchase. I’d heard that they did this, and was so happy that I got to experience this process! After a price was agreed upon, the person on the small boat would put the purchased item(s) in a net that was attached to a very long pole and lift it up to us. After retrieving the item(s), we put the money in the net and it would then be lowered back down. I LOVE this kind of ingenuity!
Our ship only cruised for about 45 minutes and then dropped anchor as this was the place where we would spend the first night. Everyone was given an opportunity to do a little kayaking if they desired, but Michelle and I were content sitting on our balcony and trying to relax. However, we soon realized that the noisy family who had been sitting behind us on our earlier boat ride out to our ship (the kids who were playing the video games) just happened to also be staying in the rooms just below ours and they enjoyed coming out on their balconies as well, and they were every bit as loud as they were earlier in the day! Thankfully these families were only doing a one night cruise, so they got off the ship the next morning. I was very thankful for that!
Dinner was served at 7:00pm and when we arrived at the Dining Room, we immediately noticed there were far more people at dinner than there were at lunch earlier in the day. Where did all these extra passengers come from?
We soon learned that these additional passengers were already on the second day of their cruise and that they had arrived the day before we did! When we first got on the boat at lunch time, they were already out on their “2nd day excursion” (the one we would be doing the next day). We were a bit surprised to find out that our boat would never actually travel very far from where we started and that what was happening was sort of a revolving door process of onloading and offloading passengers each day. In other words, half of the passengers each day were on their first day of the cruise and half were on their second day. Those passengers who were on for 3 days had already debarked in the morning to go home, shortly before another group of passengers would arrive to take their place. This all meant that on the second day of our cruise, while we were out doing our excursion, another group of passengers would arrive on the boat and think they had most of it to themselves, before being surprised like we were at dinner time to find they were dining with a whole new group of people that weren’t on the boat earlier!
I would describe our dinner as being very formal. The service was fantastic and we were served at least 8 courses, including desert. If you love seafood this dinner would be something to remember! To be honest, it was probably too much food…especially for those of us who aren’t really great fans of seafood, but the cruise line had provided us meal menus for each night of our cruise prior to our cruise dates, so the food wasn’t a surprise. We knew we’d be eating a lot of things we don’t normally eat. I don’t fault Mon Cheri Cruises at all for this and like I said, if you love seafood, you will love dinner!
After dinner we returned to our room very full and exhausted where we slept like babies until the next morning. The bed is as comfortable as it looks in the picture!
Cruise Day #2
The 2nd day of our cruise started very early as it would be a full day, and was by far our favorite day of this trip! Breakfast was served at 6:30 in the dining room. We had about 30 minutes of free time afterward before we boarded a smaller boat that would take us to our “day boat”. The day boat was the vessel that would actually take us the longest distance on our 3 day cruise and its destination was Cat Ba Island where our day excursion would commence. Upon our embarkment on the day boat, we found that there were already passengers aboard it and learned that they were from one of the other cruise lines who we believe was a “sister cruise line” to ours. Here we ran into an Australian couple that we had met on our van ride from our hotel to the marina the day before. They were very nice and we spent the whole 2 1/2 hours talking with them until we reached our destination of Cat Ba Island.
Upon our arrival at Cat Ba Island, we embarked on a 5km bicycle ride through exotic and lush tropical flora. Some of the plants had the biggest leaves I’d ever seen! It was a delightful ride through the countryside with only 1 short hill to peddle up but then we were treated on the other side with a nice downhill ride that even included going through a tunnel before we arrived at a small village. Here we were directed into an outdoor coffee shop/restaurant where we were given a brief history of the area and learned about the local inhabitants. Afterwards, we were allowed about 30 minutes to walk around before meeting back up at the bicycles and riding back to the marina where we got back on our boat where lunch was waiting!
After finishing a really nice lunch on our “day boat”, we continued cruising back towards our ship. At about the half way point, we stopped again and were given the opportunity to do some kayaking (and swimming if we liked). Michelle and I were most excited about kayaking (and not so much about swimming) so we jumped in a kayak and paddled around a small island that our boat had anchored near. The photos below don’t do it justice but this is a bit of what we saw
After returning to our boat (with wet behinds because our kayak leaked a lot!), we settled down and enjoyed the scenery as we sailed back to our main boat where we would spend the night again.
Dinner was again served at 7:00pm and it was even more food than we received the night before! On this cruise, one thing is certain. You will not go hungry!
Cruise Day #3
There was another excursion we could have gone on in the morning of the final day, but we didn’t want to wake up early for breakfast and we wanted to have a peaceful morning on our balcony, so we didn’t go. The excursion was a trip to see a cave on one of the nearby islands, but we don’t have any regrets about not going. We enjoyed the serenity. It was really foggy when we first woke up, which only added to the mystical vibe of Halong Bay.
At 9:30am, we were served brunch which was very nicely done and then went back to our room to finish packing. We were told to place our luggage outside our room by 10:30 whereby crewmembers picked them up and ensured they were loaded on to our smaller boat which would take us back to the terminal. At 11:30 we disembarked and boarded the smaller boat and began our 45 minute cruise back to the terminal. Transportation back to our hotel was already taken care of, so we only had to wait for our driver and then we headed back to Hanoi (about a 2 ½ hour drive) and arrived at our hotel at about 3:30pm.
Judgement Day
My whole reason for writing this blog is to give an honest review and I mentioned in the opening section that I wanted to cover the 4 topics in the aforementioned paragraph:
- THE ROOM – Did our room live up to our expectations? – Not quite. The room was beautiful, but it was in a terrible location under the children’s play area which made it very loud. I would rate the room 4 stars out of 5 for that reason. (I’m not taking any more points off because it was quiet at night after dinner)
- HALONG BAY – Is it as stunning as it looks on Instagram? – Yes, it’s that stunning! I will give Halong Bay 5 stars out of 5!
- THE INCLUDED EXCURSIONS – Did they live up to the hype? – Not quite. The excursions felt a bit rushed. We would have liked to have spent more time in the village that we bicycled to. I will rate this as 4 stars out of 5 for that reason.
- THE SERVICE (to include dining options) – Was the service worth the money? – The service was beyond reproach and was absolutely top notch. All of the crew members on board our boat were extremely helpful and friendly and even the service we received from our transportation to and from the hotel, to our check in at the marina, to how well we were fed and taken care of was amazing. Absolutely the service was great! But was it worth the money? I’m not sure! Our two night / 3 day cruise along with our transportation cost $880.00 USD. Now, in the USA, that’s not too bad for what we got. But for Vietnam, this is an extremely expensive getaway. I’ll say it this way. Michelle and I feel like we are happy that we did it once, but we wouldn’t do it again.
One of the real disappointments about this cruise (and it wasn’t just ours, but others as well) is that we both envisioned our boat cruising around the bay most of the time, and only stopping for excursions. However, it turned out to be the exact opposite. The boats only cruise a very short distance, then stop and drop anchor. The main boat only sails for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon. It’s only the “day boat” that really travels any distance.
Overall, I will rate this experience a 4 out of 5 stars.
And that’s my judgement.
Court is dismissed!