It was my first ever cruise so I was super excited to see what it would be like. We had wanted to cruise around Halong Bay during our time in Vietnam so my Dad had booked us on a cruise with Alisa Cruises. We drove from our hotel in Hanoi all the way to Halong Bay Marina which was a 4 hour drive. Super long but we had a good chance to catch up on some sleep. We even saw two road accidents which wasn’t very nice.

Would you like to go on a cruise around Halong Bay? 

As we arrived at our cruise ship it was lunch time and was seated in the dining room for lunch. There was soooooo much food. I could barely eat it all and we still had dinner afterwards which was super filling as well. We all got acquainted before heading out on our first trip on the cruise. You could either choose kayaking or visited a pearl harvesting farm. The group seemed split on what to do with a handful of us doing kayaking including me and my Dad. We were in the kayak together. It was incredibly foggy so we could barely see any of the mountains. But it was interesting kayaking in such a foggy area.

We then met up with the rest of the group. We headed back to the main boat to get ready for dinner. After we had showers and got ready for dinner and then headed to the restaurant for 6pm. We got to learn how to make spring rolls which was really fun. I even mastered how to make a good spring roll and they cooked them for us to try. It was time for dinner which was very fish orientated for those who could eat meat but I obviously had the vegetarian options which was soo much food it was great but I couldn’t eat it all. They then had karaoke on the boat which wasn’t our kind of thing so we headed to bed early and tried to get some sleep with all the singing going on which was quite hard.

Foggy views of Halong Bay 

Some people got up super early the next morning to do some gentle martial arts on the deck of the ship but I opted to stay in bed as one downside to Vietnamese beds is that they are so freaking un-comfy and I needed the extra sleep because I hardly slept. We got up relatively early for breakfast which was an all you can eat buffet of what you want before we headed out on our final trip on the cruise which was to explore the Surprising Caves which was alright, a little bit of nothing special aha but was interesting looking at different rock formations! After exploring the caves we headed back to the boat to start our journey back to the harbour whilst having our lunch on the boat.

Have you been on a cruise before or been on a cruise around Halong Bay?