Did Bhaya Cruises "luxury" AuCo "3-day" cruise last week. Note the use of inverted commas. We booked the most expensive cabin type which was an AuCo suite, a small-ish room with a queen bed, built in sofa (on which our child slept), en-suite bathroom with separate bathtub and shower cubicle and a wrap-around private deck with two high chairs and a small table. There are two suites of this type, adjacent to one another at the front of the boat.

While we understood this at time of booking, the cruise being 3-day is just marketing nonsense/outright lie for a trip that lasts less than 48 hours (depart 12.30pm on day 1 and arrive back at 10.30am day 3). I had been shopping around and missed a 30% off sale by one day while we were making our decision. I emailed them to say that we would book if they gave us the sale rate, to which they agreed.

The capacity was around 70 passengers, and the cruise was about half full. The crew marginally outnumbered the passengers. The crew were absolutely lovely, enthusiastic but with poor to very poor English. Apparently Byaha cruises does a lot of very noble work to help the local community on Cat Ba island, including offering many jobs on the ships - but I suspect this is the reason for English being below the general standards we otherwise experienced in the Vietnamese tourist industry. This led to quite a number of misunderstandings, especially around F&B which grated after a while.

The ship was 7 years old, but designed to look older with dark wood interiors in many areas and wooden floorboards. While everything was visually good-looking at first glance, upon closer inspection many surfaces in the cabin were quite grubby - a quick rub with dry tissue paper turning it dark grey. On the plus side this corner suite was very bright, with windows all around and two large, opening portholes in the bathroom. The cabin was equipped with AC which the crew kept leaving on but really wasn't needed on the days we traveled.

One of the reasons we had booked the suite was to enjoy some peace and quiet, especially on the private deck in the evenings while our daughter went to sleep inside. We figured the front of the boat would be a good choice as it was furthest from the bar at the rear (and some passengers had definitely come to drink). Unfortunately this was not to be the case. It seems all ships that overnight in Ha Long do so in one specific spot. There were about 20 cruise boats in total including one with a loud disco on the first night whose music seemed to bounce off the beautiful moon-lit limestone karsts all around us. Thankfully it was absent on the second night, but replaced by shouting and cheering from the crew directly above us as they watched a football match on TV. I called reception to complain, and had a very hard time making myself understood. Eventually it stopped - maybe the game ended.

There were a number of shore excursions (cave visit, floating fishing village, cycling on Cat Ba and finally a beach visit with optional kayaking) but we ended up skipping one because it felt like we were on-the-go all the time instead of relaxing.

Food was generally of a high quality and well presented except for the second dinner which was a poorly-executed on-deck barbecue, where the quality of everything was noticeably lower than all the other meals. All drinks were payable except filtered water with lunch and dinner, and all drinks at breakfast. A glass of wine or a cocktail came to about VND150k, and each evening before dinner there was a 1-1.5h Happy Hour with 2-4-1 drinks (of the same type).

Overall I'm glad that we did this, but as we paid US$1,300 (including discount) - a fortune by Vietnamese standards - we felt like the value for money wasn't quite there.

​​​​​​I haven't tried to give an exhausting picture of the ship - this is easily Googled - but if anyone has any particular questions they can't answer via the company's website then please feel free to ask.