Vietnam Day 23-25 – Our experience of a 3D/2N Halong Bay Cruise (Rosy Cruises)

Monday 14th November 2022

Today is the start of our 3 day / 2 night cruise on Halong Bay. We’re travelling with Rosy cruises, and paid $475, which we booked via Hoa Ta on Facebook.

We get picked up at 7.45am and at 7.30am someone arrives at our hotel to show us where to go. We weren’t expecting this, but it’s a good thing – our hotel is down a small road the minibus can’t reach, so now we’ll definitely be at the right pick up point!

The minibus arrives a few minutes later. The seats are large and comfortable, it’s a very similar bus to the one we got from Ninh Binh to Hanoi (thankfully the driver seems much less crazy though!)

We’re the first pickup, so we now spend an hour driving around Hanoi picking up other passengers. Today the minibus is completely full. We finally get on our way, and it’s a smooth and comfortable ride. We stop off at an oyster farm along the way, so the driver can have a break and everyone can use the bathroom. I actually find it a very interesting stop. There’s a lot of information about pearls and how they’re produced, and you can see the workers seeding the oysters. Apparently they then have to wait at least 2 years for the oyster to form the pearl around the seed.

We then continued on the minibus to Halong Bay, where everyone was dropped at their respective waiting rooms. The waiting rooms seemed a little chaotic, packed with passengers from often more than one cruise company. We found the check-in desk for Rosy, paid the balance of our cruise (and were a little disconcerted that apparently they don’t give receipts), and were told to leave our luggage. We were expecting them to take it somewhere, but nope, it was seemingly left abandoned in the waiting room. Fingers crossed our luggage makes it, and we’ve not just paid a lot of money to a scammer!

After about 30 minutes our tender boat arrived to transfer us to the cruise ship. As we sailed towards the Rosy, Viet, our cruise manager, explained the itinerary for the day.

As we approached, we were greeted by the crew stood on deck and very enthusiastically waving at us! Inside, the ship was beautiful.

We particularly liked our cabin and it’s sea view. All the cabins on the ship have private balconies, and I think this is the same for all of the Halong Bay cruise ships.

After checking in, it was time for lunch, which was served in the ships restaurant. A lot of the tables are by the window, and the views were amazing! Lunch was a multi-course set menu. I really enjoyed the soup and the squid stuffed with pork, but the main course was very westernised and I didn’t find it as good. The dessert of mango mousse was excellent, and Pete was even offered a second one which he gladly accepted. I got the impression that if you wanted more food, you could just ask for it and it wouldn’t be a problem.

We were then free to explore the ship as we sailed into the bay. The top deck is a sundeck, with a bar area, lots of seating, and incredible views over the water.

We then went to sit on our balcony for a while. Just as we sat down a little boat selling drinks and snacks approached the cruise ship.

Her drinks were a bit cheaper than the price on Rosy cruises so we ordered four cold beers, which she put in a fishing net and hoisted up to us.

We drank two of them on the balcony, and stuck the other two in the fridge in our room to enjoy later. It wasn’t much longer after we’d finished our beers before we dropped anchor for kayaking. They basically give you a kayak, tell you roughly where to go, and then leave you to get on with it.

It was so relaxing paddling around the little mountain islands, although I soon discovered kayaks aren’t the most comfortable things to sit in! Pete, ever adventurous, decided we should try and paddle round one of the further islands. It was all going well, until we suddenly ground to a stop. The final channel was too shallow to kayak through, with quite a few sharp looking rocks sticking out of the water. In hindsight, we should just have got out and walked through the channel, carrying the kayak (our ship wasn’t too far from the other side) but I was slightly panicking at the thought of one of the rocks puncturing the bottom of the kayak! So we backtracked and paddled all the way back to the cruise ship, only just making it back as the sun was setting.

We returned to our cabin to shower and change before the 6pm spring roll making session on the sundeck. It was also happy hour during this time – although it was buy 2 drinks get 1 free, rather than the usual buy 1 get 1 free that we’re used to. On the plus, you can mix and match the drinks and don’t have to drink all 3 at once. So we ordered 2, then got the 3rd free one a bit later on.

The spring roll making was fun. First there was a demonstration, then the passengers were allowed to get stuck in. The spring rolls were then fried for everyone to enjoy.

At 7pm it was time for dinner in the restaurant, which turned out to be another multi-course affair. We went to our cabin to grab our couple of beers from earlier (the drinks on the ship are quite expensive). Again, the food was very good but I wasn’t totally convinced by the oysters with cheese and would have preferred a more traditional Vietnamese main dish (rather than the very westernised steak and mashed potatoes with a cheesy sauce)

After dinner you could do karaoke or squid fishing. I don’t think anyone on our boat did the karaoke, but quite a few of us had a try at squid fishing. Unfortunately it’s not the right season for squid fishing, so no-one caught anything but it was a very relaxing end to the day.

Tuesday 15th November 2022

Rosy cruise offer what they describe as a light breakfast. It turned out to be a selection of meats, bread, pastries, and fruit which you help yourself to, and then a hot option of either Vietnamese noodle soup or freshly cooked eggs, cooked however you like them. Not my idea of light, but I suppose it is compared with the multi-course feasts we’ve had so far! There’s also free tea, coffee, juice, and water with breakfast, which makes a nice change as most of the meals don’t come with any drinks.

The majority of passengers seem to go for the 1-night option, so it was just ourselves and one other couple who boarded the tender to take us to the day boat.

The day boat isn’t exclusively for Rosy cruises, but picks up passengers from various cruise companies. This makes sense, as very few people on each cruise seem to stay 2 nights. The day boat consisted of 2 decks, with the restaurant area, seating, and a couple of toilets on the lower deck, and a big open plan sundeck with with seating and deckchairs on the top deck.

We sailed to Cat Ba island, where we given the option of cycling or getting an electric car to the village. Most people, including Pete and I, chose to cycle. I’m not much of a cyclist, but fortunately the route was flat most of the way. There was one quite steep hill where most people, including myself, got off and pushed their bikes up.

Once we reached the village, we went to a “fish massage” place, one of the ones where you stick your feet in a pond, and tiny fish come and eat the dead skin.

After relaxing with the fish, David (our guide on the day boat) took us to some of the ancient houses in the village, and explained a bit about them. At the final one, we sampled a few different flavours of rice wine, one of which had a massive snake in the flask. To be honest, they all tasted very similar to me. Clearly I’m not a connoisseur.

I took the lazy option of getting the electric car back from the village, and enjoyed the views. A few more people joined me in this option, but Pete cycled back (at a considerably faster pace than when I was with him)

Back on the boat lunch was served. I was very pleased to see it was all Vietnamese food (ignoring the side of fries). Each table was served with a succession of dishes – spring rolls, fried fish cakes, prawns, a whole steamed fish, and stir fried chicken with ginger and lemongrass. Finished off with watermelon. It was all very good, and I preferred it to the fancier, better presented, but much more westernised food on the cruise.

After lunch, the boat sailed deep into Lan Ha Bay, where we dropped anchor for kayaking.

We then sailed a bit further, and dropped anchor again – this time near a very small beach for swimming. A few people (Pete included) jumped from the top deck into the sea. I’m however much too chicken for that.

This evening’s entertainment is the same as yesterdays, starting with spring roll making at 6pm. As we’d done this last night, we just sat on the sundeck admiring the views with a couple of beers (which disappointingly are not included in the happy hour promotion). We still got to eat the spring rolls though, as Andrew (one of the waiting staff) very kindly bought one over to us, which was a nice surprise.

I was a bit disappointed when we got into the restaurant and saw the menu was identical to last night. However, it soon became apparent that we were being served different food to everyone else. We were very glad of this as we love trying new things and definitely didn’t want the same meal twice in two days.

We already knew there’s be little chance of catching any squid, so after dinner we went back to sit on our balcony for a while before bed.

Wednesday 16th November 2022

It was an early start today as the tender boat leaves at 7.15am to take us to the dark and light caves, and floating fishing village. Breakfast was the same as yesterday, but we didn’t eat much as we’ll have brunch late morning (which I suspect will e substantial).

It’s a short ride to the fishing village, where we’re transferred to traditional wooden sampan boats to explore the caves.

These boats are rowed by a guy standing up at the back of the boat – very different to any we’ve seen so far. It was very scenic and enjoyable rowing through the caves, although these are not as impressive as the ones found in Trang An, Ninh Binh.

We rowed back to the floating fishing village. It’s more of a hamlet than a village, with a couple of floating shacks, a small fish farm, and a few house boats moored around the floating structure. I liked the fish farm, it’s basically a few small square ponds that are filled by sea water (with netting to stop the fish escaping).

We got back on the tender and headed back to the cruise ship. We were now sailing through the most scenic parts of Halong Bay so went up on the sundeck to admire the views.

It was soon time for brunch to be served, as we continued to sail to shore. This was another multi-course affair, and was probably my favourite meal on the ship. Even though the food was still very westernised, the smoked duck just melted in your mouth and the chicken Kiev thing was very tasty.

At about 11.30am, we said goodbye to the Rosy and transferred to the tender to take us to shore.

The waiting room on shore was again quite chaotic, with various different minibus companies coming to pick passengers up. We had to wait about 30 minutes before ours arrived. It was a very similar bus to the journey there, and we had a comfortable ride back to Hanoi (with one 20 minute stop at a service station along the way).