We had a fantastic time on the junk boat cruise and highly recommend it to others. The sleeping cabins were delightful, clean and surprisingly spacious. The crew were friendly, helpful and seemed to really enjoy their jobs. The scenery in Halong Bay was beautiful, including the cave tour and the kayaking tour. This tour was one of the highlights of our trip to Vietnam.

The highlight of our trip, tour takes you around halong bay on a fantastically furnished boat. The dinner/lunch was more than anyone could possibly eat and unbelievably tasty (surprising what they cook in a galley these days!!)

Huong, the tour guide, is fantastic and makes your trip as amazing as the surroundings!

Would definitely recommend to others. Service was amazing and along it is only a short time spent in Halong Bay itself due to the 4 hour trip from Hanoi it is still worth it.
There is soooo much food on this boat, you will never go hungry and it was all delicious.
Our tour guide was really lovely and helpful. We visited a cave, climbed to the top of a mountain (ish) and also went kayaking and swimming.
It's a small group as well which is nice.

4 hours in an unsafe mini van to get there from Hanoi (broken seat back rest and no seat belt) with a driver whose manner of driving I would consider unsafe. I was quite frightened. We were herded around like cattle, not told what was going on. A lot of waiting at the dock (over an hour). "Guide" with very minimal English. Communication was extremely difficult, frustrating and time consuming. No information given to us at all as to where we were, where we were going or what we were looking at. We got yelled at if we took to long to do something. We were never given time to get our things together (eg water bottles, jackets and medications) before being forced off the main junk and onto another boat to go caving. Guide refused to let us fish or kayak even though our itineraries said that those things were part of the cruise. Eventually relented about the kayaking, if we paid US$30 extra! We didn't. Drinks on board very over priced (US$30 for bottles of wine). Nothing to eat for a vegetarian. VERY disappointed and would not recommend at all.

Hmmm...so easy for this to be the most amazing trip, yet so royally messed up by the tour company. The actual boat was great, with much nicer cabins than I had expected and especially good food. The staff were helpful, but only when they had to be. And here is the problem. Once they had done their duty (e.g. served dinner), they disappeared into their private quarters. So if you wanted a drink, you had to go and rouse someone and it felt very awkward, particularly if you wanted a hot drink that they then had to make. They also did not conduct any kind of 'tour' - we were told nothing at all about Halong Bay, or the boats etc. When you get to the caves, the guide just gave us the ticket and pointed the way. When we were in there, there were loads of other groups with their guide explaining and pointing out interesting things. It got worse too - they started making repairs to the boat doors whilst we were sat there enjoying the tranquillity (literally, man turned up with a drill and just set to work next to us), and then they tried to charge us for all of the drinks we had had. This included tea and coffee - eventually they relented as I still had our booking form which clearly stated 'free tea and coffee throughout', but even then they tried to argue that this only meant 'free at breakfast'. And drinks were expensive - a good 3 times more than you'd pay on land. Also be warned that this is not 2 days - on the 2nd day, you get served lunch at 10.30am and then you're off before 12. Do this trip - but with a different company.