Ha Long Bay cruise guide: day trips, overnight boats and routes

Day cruise or overnight cruise?

Take a day cruise if you have one day; stay a night on the water if you can, because an overnight boat leaves around midday, anchors in a sheltered bay and reaches the quieter routes that day boats rarely visit. Day cruises follow an official route of about 4 hours (VHL1) or about 6 hours (VHL2) on boats that carry 99 or 48 passengers. Overnight boats run mostly along VHL2, VHL3 and VHL4, and range from traditional wooden boats to steel boats of 20 to 50 rooms and ships with pools and spas.

The crowds sit on the short routes. VHL3 and VHL4 averaged only 200 to 400 passengers a day in 2025, while the whole bay took about 10,000 visitors a day in March 2026. Ti Tốp Island and the Sửng Sốt, Luồn and Mê Cung caves are the stops that the bay’s management board, the Ha Long Bay - Yen Tu World Heritage Management Board (the Board), names as the most visited.

The official cruise routes

Every boat follows one of the eight numbered Ha Long Bay itineraries, VHL1 to VHL8, which Quảng Ninh published in Decision 2119/QĐ-UBND on 19 July 2024. The route fixes which caves and islands a boat may visit, and one sightseeing ticket covers every stop on it: there are no separate cave tickets. All eight leave from either Tuần Châu port or the Hạ Long International Passenger Port.

VHL5 ends on Cát Bà, a one-way crossing to Gia Luận pier in Hải Phòng. VHL6 is for boats licensed to run between Hạ Long and Cát Bà and back within 48 hours, VHL7 crams the first four routes into one day for fast explorer yachts only, and VHL8 is the coastal run for dinner boats past Bãi Cháy and the bridge. No typical length was found for VHL3 to VHL8.

An overnight ticket combines the sightseeing fee with a night’s stay, and boats may anchor only at the named anchorages; “1 night” means at most 24 hours from leaving port and “2 nights” at most 48. The planning page sets out the fees and child discounts for every route, with the overnight fees and the port charge.

The caves guide goes through each cave on these routes, with the steps and the opening hours.

What a typical overnight cruise includes

A 2-day 1-night cruise boards around midday, spends the afternoon at one or two stops such as Ti Tốp and Luồn, anchors for the night and returns the next morning after one more cave. The programme below joins the Board’s boarding rule to one reporter’s dated account; real programmes differ by boat and by season.

That November 2025 account listed a balcony cabin, three meals, guided cave visits, tender rides to the stops and life jackets as included. Drinks, massage, squid fishing and kayaking at some points cost extra, and a Hanoi van seat, if not bundled, is about 260,000 VND each way. Bring your passport: boats collect ID at boarding because foreign guests must be registered for the night.

How much a Ha Long Bay cruise costs

No authority sets cruise fares, so every price here is a dated market range. A day cruise ran about 600,000 to 850,000 VND in April 2025, a standard 2-day 1-night cruise costs about 2.5 to 4 million VND per person, and a 3-day 2-night cruise about 4.5 to 6.5 million VND, a figure from one source only. The official fees, 310,000 VND for a day trip and 560,000 to 810,000 VND overnight, are normally inside the price.

Day cruise, about 4 hours (itinerary VHL1)600,000 to 750,000 VND

Day cruise, about 6 hours (itinerary VHL2)750,000 to 850,000 VND

Premium day cruise, about 8 hours890,000 to 1,200,000 VND

Day trip from Hanoi (shared van both ways plus a day boat)from about 1,300,000 VND (computed)

Overnight cruise, 2 days 1 night, budget or discounted1,500,000 to 2,500,000 VND

Overnight cruise, 2 days 1 night, standard2,500,000 to 4,000,000 VND

Overnight cruise, 3 days 2 nights4,500,000 to 6,500,000 VND

Official fees for an adult, normally inside the price310,000 VND for a VHL1 or VHL2 day trip; 560,000 to 810,000 VND overnight

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A quote that leaves the official fees out can look cheaper than the real total, so ask for an itemised price and what it excludes. For scale, a VnExpress reporter paid about 4,000,000 VND per person in November 2025 for a night in a balcony cabin with meals and guided visits. Discounts happen in quiet weeks: one boat advertised as 5-star cut a night to about 1,500,000 VND in February 2024, 20 to 25% below its usual rates. Holidays go the other way. Around 30 April to 3 May 2026 overnight cruises ran at 80 to 100% occupancy and operators held their prices.

No dated, sourced price exists for luxury ships. The top of the press figures is 4,000,000 VND per person per night, and a 109.9 m ship with 55 cabins, a pool, a cinema and a spa began a 3-day Hạ Long and Bái Tử Long programme from Tuần Châu in May 2024 without publishing a fare.

How to choose a boat

Ask for the boat’s name, its registration number and the date of its latest inspection, confirmation that it is licensed for overnight stays, a life jacket for every guest and the cancellation terms in writing. Star grades are voluntary labels, so ask who issued any ranking certificate.

Labels deserve some scepticism. In October 2019 the province counted 173 overnight boats, 80 ranked 2-star and 93 ranked 1-star, with none above 2 stars in that breakdown; no current count of 3-star to 5-star boats exists. The Board’s public boat directory listed only 8 overnight boats on 3 October 2026, so it is not a full register. Buy sightseeing tickets at the Board’s counters inside the port terminals, and turn down touts outside the port, roadside brokers on the way into town and vendor boats that come alongside.

Is a Ha Long Bay cruise safe?

In the record gathered for this guide, three accidents killed several passengers on the bay: 12 people in February 2011, 5 in October 2012 and 39 in July 2025. Since the 2025 capsizing every tourist boat must carry position tracking, storm shelters and a thunderstorm warning system have been added, and from 15 February 2026 new wooden-hull overnight boats can no longer be built. Sailings are stopped when a storm approaches. No official incident rate for the bay was found, so none is given here.

The full record below also lists fires, which have killed nobody in the reports found, the two Lan Hạ collisions on the Hải Phòng side and two deaths aboard that were not accidents.

The rules that matter most at sea:

• In bad weather the master takes the helm in person, guests may not stand or walk near rails, bow, wheelhouse or deck edges, boats may not be tied together underway, and a lost journey-monitoring signal must be reported to the Port Authority at once.
• When a storm or tropical depression approaches, the authority stops departure clearance from a stated hour until the final bulletin, boats at sea must reach shelter by a stated hour, and boats returning with guests can still be cleared in; notices appear on the Board site and in the provincial press.
• AIS is compulsory on all roughly 500 tourist boats (deadline 15 August 2025), and boats are to keep VHF channel 16 and AIS working together.
• On overnight vessels the passenger areas and the state of the boat must be patrolled and checked at least once an hour with a log entry, crew must be drilled regularly in life-saving appliances and escape procedures, escape doors must open without a key and corridors need lit or luminous escape guidance.
• New wooden-hull overnight vessels, floating restaurants and floating hotels cannot be built, and wooden-hull vessels cannot be converted into overnight tourist vessels; existing wooden boats may still sail.
• Sightseeing boats and speedboats must carry life jackets, rings and rafts; guests are not required to wear life jackets throughout and put them on when the master instructs; guests must never stand or sit on the bow or rails.

A weather cancellation is official only if the Port Authority or the provincial department has announced it; notices appear on the Board’s site and in the provincial press, as on 20 July 2025 and from 07:00 on 22 August 2026. No Vietnamese law on refunds for these cancellations was found. Deposits came back when a ban was official in September 2024 and were lost where the contract said so in July 2025, so get the terms in writing. The UK government advises asking about a boat’s safety record, registration and crew certificates and insisting on a safety briefing and a life jacket; Canada’s advice is to choose a reputable company and stay off any boat that looks overloaded or unseaworthy.

Ha Long Bay day trips from Hanoi

A day trip from Hanoi takes about 11 to 12 hours for roughly 4 hours on the water. Leaving the Old Quarter at 07:30, boarding around 11:00 and taking the 4-hour VHL1 trip puts you back in Hanoi about 18:30 to 19:00. The 6-hour VHL2 trip started at 11:00 ends after the winter cave closing time, so it needs a 06:00 start or a night in Hạ Long.

From Hanoi, VHL1

From Hanoi, VHL2

From a bed in Bãi Cháy, VHL2

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• On the road
• At the port
• On the boat
• Free time ashore
• Later if traffic or the boat runs long
• 17:00, caves close in winter (1 November to 15 April)

Agencies sell the Hanoi day tour as about 12 hours, and a shared van seat with a 4- to 6-hour day boat comes to roughly 1.3 million VND. Friday evenings and public holidays add time on the road, and traffic back into Hanoi after a holiday can queue for hours. From Ninh Bình the direct vans take about 4 to 4.5 hours each way, too long for a day trip. The Hanoi to Ha Long Bay guide compares the vans, cars and coaches with their October 2026 fares.

Cruises to Lan Ha and Bai Tu Long

Some programmes go to Lan Hạ Bay off Cát Bà in Hải Phòng, or to Bái Tử Long Bay, which has its own official routes, BTL1 to BTL10. Since 1 April 2026 a sea route links Hạ Long Bay with Lan Hạ Bay, with tickets sold at the Tuần Châu and Hạ Long ports; its boats, fares and timetable were not found in the sources. Licensed Cát Bà boats may also work VHL3 to VHL6 from Quảng Ninh’s ports since 1 May 2025. Kayaking on the Lan Hạ side has been suspended since 15 November 2024, and no Bái Tử Long sightseeing fee or cruise fare was found. Ha Long, Lan Ha and Bai Tu Long compared sets the three bays side by side.

Ocean liners at the passenger port

Ocean cruise ships dock at the Hạ Long International Passenger Port in Bãi Cháy, mainly from September to April, and the Board’s calendar lists three calls for October 2026, among them one on 13 October from 08:00 to 20:00. The port opened in 2018 with an international terminal 462 m long that takes two large ships at once. The Board reported over 50 international calls from January to September 2026, with about 30 more expected by the end of the year, and one ship brought nearly 4,500 guests from China. The Board asks agencies to design excursions for these passengers.

Questions visitors ask