Ha Long Bay, Vietnam - Spectacular, mesmerizing but sadly polluted, overcrowded with tourist & too commercialized

A month ago, we went to visit my husband who is doing a project in Hanoi. We stayed at the Renaissance in Hanoi & he booked a tour and paid USD680 for a cruise in Ha Long Bay. We travelled 3 hours in a car at 60 km/h average speed from our hotel to Ha Long Bay. This package included a private boat cruise & some kayaking or bamboo boating, trip to a cave and trip to a beach. It also included lunch on board the cruise. And the 3 hours journey back to Renaissance hotel in Hanoi.

This is our cruise boat:

This is where Ha Long Bay is located. If you ever decided to visit Vietnam, this is a place that you must not missed although I, personally will not want to go there again.

There's 1243 google reviews at the time of writing. Mostly great reviews and if you are interested, there are many beautiful pictures there:

Here's some of the pictures that we took:

This is the kissing hens (maybe a cock kissing a hen):

Here's a dog: Looking kinda cute

Here's another breathtaking picture: (They put this is on their 200 000 Dong note)

Here's my daughter onboard the cruise (upstairs):

Downstairs:

Here's our other tourist friends on their bamboo boat although I really don't know why it is call a bamboo boat coz nothing on the boat was made of bamboo. I took this picture from our bamboo boat. We had a choice of whether to kayak our own or to ride on this boat. Kayaking was too daunting a task here with so many boats around, we might capzise and the water seemed really polluted, so we decided on the bamboo boat.

And here's the cave. Going into the cave was a nightmare. There were like hundreds of people and everyone was pushing their way inside and the path to the cave was jammed pack with human beings. We were bombarded with body odour, bad breadth and loud noises. Half way through, we wanted to turn back, but there was no turning back, finally after half an hour, we made our way into the cave. It was not too bad but I would never ever do this again!

We skipped one part of the tour i.e. the visit to the beach. We had a look from far and we found that the beach was crowded so we skipped that and headed back. We had a meal onboard too but it was below our expectation so, I guess, I didn't even take a picture. It would have been better if we ordered it right there instead of preorder.

All in all, it was good but it could have been better. So many people went there and had a great time and made great reviews. Maybe, we are just too fussy.

Finally , we got back to our hotel almost in time for bed, my daughter jumping for joy...