A review for Heritage Cruises and the Hoang Lan Hotel, Ha long Bay, Vietnam:

A warning to anyone who wants to book in the Hoang Lan Hotel, DO NOT.

The rooms are unclean, cockroaches running around and we thought we detected signs of bed buds.

What was worse was we asked the advise of the lady, Shoan i think her name was, about arranging a boat trip around Ha Long bay, she said she could arrange for us to be on one of the more luxurious junks on a 2 day tour. She had shown us pictures of the Indochina boat which looked top notch. We arriving at the port there was a lot of waiting around followed by Shoan ushering us towards another guide, he then in turn ushered us to a guide in a Heritage t-shirt. He was to be our guide and wouldn't give us his full name, just the name Bang. After a lot of waiting we asked when we would be boarding the indochina, he said the indochina was being cleaned (which proves he was part of the scam) and we were to take another boat. By this point we had already given our passport to him so had to play ball for now. We took a short boat ride out to our boat, which was a Heritage cruise boat, with half the letter fallen off the side of the boat. The pictures we saw looked nothing like what we had been sold, the rooms were small and the food was inedible. One of the other guest on the tour sleeping on the lower deck heard rats in the night. What was worse was our guide Bang was extremely rude, unhelpful, and knew nothing of interest about Ha Long Bay.

The boat docked several times to drop people off at Cat Ba Island and Monkey Island, Bang would promise he would only be 5 minutes and almost 2 hours later would come back. If we were informed of his timings we would of gone for a swim or just relaxed on the top deck but the continual lack of information was frustrating to say the least. One one kayaking trip, we asked if he would join us kayaking to show us some of the cave, he said "no, he was tired and the kayaking was boring". On another kayaking trip, he guided us out to some cave about 10-15 mins away from the boat and told us to go in, when we exited the cave he was no where to be seen and had gone back to the boat leaving us to find our way back in the dark.

After a lot of complaining we were transferred to another boat. As we were transferring to the dock, one of our friends almost fell in between two boats, there was no assistance from Bang. We transferred to the Dolphin Cruise which was marginally nicer but still not what we had been sold. We made the most of our time in Halong Bay but felt thoroughly ripped off.

I would urge any one considering a tour in ha Long bay not to book through the Hoang Lan Hotel or through Heritage tours. They are liars and scam artists.

We traveled for the majority of our trip with GAP Adventures and I cannot recommend them more highly.