We were originally booked on the Signature Halong Cruise 2 day / 1 night option but was advised 1 day before departure there was a problem with the vessel and they took it out of service for repairs. They offered us another ship owned by the same company called the Athena Royal Cruise. This was a slightly larger and more modern ship (22 rooms instead of 16 on the original Junk style boat). We accepted their offer. On arrival they surprised us with an upgrade to one of the 2 deluxe suites along with a lovely cake to celebrate our wedding anniversary. All the staff were excellent with Morning (his name), the cruise manger extremely helpful throughout including helping to book our onward transfer to Hanoi. Please not - They cruise the route to Bai Tu Long, not Halong Bay. This route is around 30 km whereas Halong Bay route is only around 10 km. In our opinion this is a far better route as only a few ships use it whereas dozens of operators use Halong Bay and it gets extremely crowded. At times it felt like we were the only ship in the area. Absolutely beautiful and one of the main highlights of our trip to Vietnam. 100% recommended from me and my very happy wife.

Everything was perfect.

Staff were amazing. Food was some of the best I’ve ever had. Great value for money. Trips were perfect!

The only thing that wasn’t even a negative but just something to be aware of is that there is no Wi-Fi in the rooms but the Wi-Fi is great in the restaurant.

Amazing, it was a quant cruise boat and just felt like a home on the water

Shower, it was hand held and I little hard to use, but it was manageable

The boat didn’t have a lot of cabins, which is better vs big cruise boats. Additionally they could provide food with vegetarian options.

The room had nothing to do with what we booked. The room was smaller, without facilities that we saw in the photos. We told them but they tried to justify saying that they renovated and they didn’t have the time to take new photos. When we arrived our toilet was not clean and we had to tell them so someone can come and clean it (finally not clean and I cleaned by myself…) The worst part of the whole trip was that our locker room was defective so we got blocked inside the room. As it was during the cooking class nobody was answering the phone in the reception. We were calling for more than 10 min, but no answer. Luckily another client heard us and they called somebody. This issue is really important as it indicates that security is not the priority of this company.