Halong Bay

My wife and I are visiting Halong bay in Jan 14, our ship docks in halong bay. we do not want to stay overnight on junk but want to see the bay and caves with some vietnamese food.

Do any boats offer this and as anyone done a similar trip?

That is what we did a few years ago. Most enjoyable. You can see photos from our tour in our review on our website www.thepreismans.com. Just click on the Southeast Asia link. A link to the tour operator we used to set it up, Mrs. Ha, is in the review.

Vietnam private tours did a one day cruise for my family including lunch. They also arranged overnight in HCMC. Can recommend highly. We visited a fishing village in halong and beautiful caves. Stephen was the person who arranged everything. Wan was our guide on the cruise. We paid a deposit prior to our trip and paid the balance to Stephen when we arrived in Vietnam. They actually changed their usual overnight itinerary to accommodate our one day cruise request. Look them up on the internet their former name is Best Cruises. Hope this helps we had a wonderful day Jennifer

Yes, there are day junks available. They carry up to about 30, that size junk is used by cruise ships for their ship-sponsored cruises, and they will fill to capacity but about a dozen is ideal - allows everyone to lounge on the roof. Two qualities, standard and deluxe - I think the difference is more to do with age and condition than luxury. They have a very basic washroom and sell cold beers etc.

Offered as 2hours, or 4 or 6 or 8. Two hours is pretty pointless, much of that time is crossing the bay to the fascinating limestone Karsts than cruising amongst them. 6 hours was ideal for us.

We were a group of ten, we hired a junk on-the-fly when we arrived and paid about 90 USD total for the junk, no food. Thats total, not per person. :cool:

That's massively cheaper than pre-booking. But we did run the risk of not getting a boat. If you prebook you,ll pay 4 or 5 times as much - but it will still be great value.

You can include food in your booking.

Or you can select fish at the floating village, and the crew will cook it for you. Neat, but overpriced even by western standards.

The overnite cruises don't fit cruise ship timings. The Aussie swan did well to get one to rearrange, because a one day trip that ties in with ship timings costs the operators two overniters.

Amazing and surreal. And the mist which usually shrouds the Karsts, far from detracting, adds to the eeriness

JB :)