No visit to Hanoi without a tour to Halong Bay, that much was already certain. Somehow, a stamp like “Unesco World Heritage Site” is a decisive indication that you will miss something worth seeing here if you skip this place when planning your trip. And if you’re ever in Vietnam, you shouldn’t miss Halong Bay with its impressive karst rocks.
2 days to Halong Bay from Hanoi
I decided on a 2-day tour to Halong Bay with an overnight stay on the boat, meals included. Since I was traveling alone, I basically got only a “half” double room—if demand had been high, I would have had to share it with someone else. In the end, though, it wasn’t a problem; another solo traveler and I each ended up with our own cabin—which, by the way, wasn’t half bad. It really felt like a cruise.
Cruising through Halong Bay in Vietnam
We set off early in the morning at 8. The bus ride in a rustic Vietnamese minivan took a good four hours, and aside from a bathroom break at a rest stop with an attached tourist trap in the form of an oversized souvenir shop, there was: nothing.
At the harbor in Halong City, we boarded a shuttle boat that took us to our junk. We settled into our rooms, and until lunchtime we were able to explore the boat and doze on the sun deck. Slowly, the ship picked up speed, and so did our group dynamic.
No one had actually gotten the trip they’d booked; the original boat was either fully booked after all or otherwise unavailable. Instead, we got a great upgrade to this better ship—and as it quickly turned out, our stories were similar. My guess is that they’re trying to put together a suitable group rather than accommodating individual boat preferences. In our case, at any rate, the mix worked out well—a colorful group of people from all corners of the world—so the group was a good start. And slowly, the initial fog in Halong Bay began to lift.
We were lucky: The sky cleared up more and more until not a single cloud was in sight, and everyone was over the moon. We toured a stalactite cave—it was big, but if you’ve visited other caves before, you might not be quite as blown away—we went kayaking, went for a swim in the evening sun, and climbed up to a super-high lookout point.
Thanks to Alex and Maria, two well-prepared British girls with an almost inexhaustible supply of good gin, we also got the obligatory karaoke evening on the boat behind us and all together let the evening end on the sun deck under a starry sky in the mirror-smooth bay.
Is a tour to Halong Bay worth it?
Of course, you don’t sail through the entire, vast Halong Bay on this tour—but maybe that’s for the best. Environmental protection is a bit of a mixed bag in Vietnam. Dirty dishwater (I’d rather not think about the other stuff here), for example, simply flows out of the open galley door at the back of the ship and into the sea. With so many ships out there, that really adds up.
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Which tour should you choose for Halong Bay?
You don’t have to plan a trip from Hanoi very well – enough tour operators offer boat tours through Halong Bay in agency offices. Each hotel is also happy to help and acts as a tour office. Alternatively, you can book boat tours online in advance:
How many days do you need?
It’s a good idea to take the time to book a 3-day tour that includes a second night on Cat Ba Island—according to many fellow travelers I met along the way, it’s well worth it. I would strongly advise against the one-day tour. The four-hour bus ride feels like it goes on forever. Traveling this route both there and back in a single day is a real ordeal. And there’s hardly any time left to enjoy the bay itself.
