Ha Long Bay

We booked a three day, two night Ha Long Bay tour before arriving in Hanoi for 1,976,000VND ($103) per person.  While visually, the tour was spectacular, the amenities were lacking.  The service was generally very friendly and helpful, but focused and time oriented.  Would I recommend a tour of Ha Long Bay? Yes.  Would I recommend this tour company? Probably not.

First the beautiful:

Our vessel

The 'snack boats' that followed us around and served us cheap, cold beer while swimming

View from the caves

Our tour guide Dat trying to explain rock formations in broken English and then looking at us like we were stupid if we didn't see 'The Laughing Buddha'

More caves

In Viet Nam, it is OK to feed your trash to the Dolphins. Renee thought this was just way too ironic. 

Inadequate floatation devices 

Kayaking to floating village

Junk boat + snack boats 

Ahh! Beautiful Cat Ba National Park

Beginning of the 'easy hike' 

While the first part of the hike had some stairs and a clear path, towards the top you were rock climbing and climbing up rusted out ladders. People's shoes were breaking because they did not expect the hike to be so strenuous. We even saw one girl go down barefoot because the mud made her shoes too slippery. 

ALMOST to the top! 

Chris made it, Renee took one look at the weight limit sign and rusted stairs and said 'Not on your life!'

View from the top! Very Jurassic Park-ish! 

Don't look down! 

Monkey Island Resort

Arrival at Monkey Island

Our Hut

Inside our hut

Hiking around Monkey Island

The nicer beach that we could look at, but couldn't go swimming at

Gasp! A MONKEY ON MONKEY ISLAND!! 

'Floating Bar' aka our tour guide with a bucket of booze he was distributing 

Blissful about the Floating Bar and the adequate floatation devices this time! 

Buffet dinner... mostly seafood and some chicken, with the ever present French Fries! Nearly EVERYTHING we ate on our tour was deep fried in one way or another! 

Overall:
During the three days of this trip, I'd say about a whole day was spent traveling.  Ha Long Bay is about 3.5 hours from Hanoi each way, the boat to and from Cat Ba Island took about another hour and there was driving to and from the dock involved, and we got stuck at Cat Ba National Park waiting for about an hour for the bus to pick us up.  Now, I thought that there would be more relaxing time as this is a vacation on a bay; not really.  I think the tour guides count relaxing time as whenever we aren't actively moving, though waiting for a bus or sitting in a car is not too relaxing.  We were granted about an hour of swim time after the cave and kayaking on the first day and we had the last half of the second day on Monkey Island.  We had the nights to ourselves, though I think that was more recovery from the day than relaxing.  We slept on the junk boat the first night, pretty nice boat rooms, and the second night was at Monkey Island Resort, okay huts for the ambiance.
A cruel joke was having air conditioning in the rooms.  While they would turn them on only at night, they would turn them off in the wee hours of the morning to wake us up.  Let me tell you, there is nothing worse than waking up exhausted from the previous day hot and sweaty.  I know they did this to wake us up without "waking us up" but I thought it was unnecessary and started the day on the wrong foot.  The third day was spent almost entirely traveling as we moved from Monkey Island to Cat Ba Island back to Ha Long Bay to drive back to Hanoi.