Halong Bay is the second of Vietnam's World Heritage Sites (the other being Phong Nha), and while Phong Nha sees hardly any (western) visitors, Halong is the big thing to do while here.
It's a series of Limestone Karsts which stick out of the sea. It's pretty interesting to read about (if you like that kind of thing), and there are more details here.
While you can do it independently, it's much easier, and not that much more expensive to take a tour. One problem with the Ha Long tours is that there are loads of horror stories, about people who discover terrible food, poor service, or even rats on board the boats. So I spent quite a bit of time researching the options.
There are two companies who seem to get consistently good reports: Handspan and Vega Travel. Mel had been on a Handspan tour and it sounded great. They are more expensive that everyone else, but you usually get what you pay for as they say. The only problem was that I really wanted to go sea kayaking which meant their mid-range tour which was almost $170 USD for two days, including the single supplement.
So I went to check out Vega, and their tour was $87USD including free kayaking and the single supplement. Only problem was, they didn't have enough people for the tour the next day. So I hung around in Hanoi and went back at 4:45pm (all the boat companies close the lists at 5pm - and sometimes you can negotiate a late booking discount). Luckily there were enough people so I signed up.
The tours are fairly straight forward - a three hour drive to Ha Long, a cruise through the bay while enjoying lunch, stop at a cave, cruise through the bay, climb up one of the limestone karsts to get a great view. Cruise to another bay, kayak, and then food. The next day it's another cruise while enjoying breakfast, and back to Ha Long to drive back to Hanoi.
It can feel a little bit like being on a tourist conveyor belt - everyone does the same stuff on all of the tours. But - it was an incredibly relaxing and thoroughly enjoyable two days. I'd totally recommend it - and the great thing about Vega is they go to a quite bay for the night you spend on the boat.
Luckily, there were some great people on the Vega tour, including two Canadians and an Australian. We ended up playing cards on the cruise back which was great fun. Just wish I'd taken some more pictures of the tour - but I was enjoying it way too much...
Here are a few pics:
Sailing into Ha Long Bay:
Big cave in one of the karsts:
The view across the bay after climbing 400 steps:
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