We flew Jetstar Pacific from DaNang to Hanoi paying about $40 per person for the one way flight. We arrived at the Hanoi Hilton Garden Inn near the Old Quarter at about 7pm. We used 10,000 Hilton Hhonors points per room per night and booked 3 rooms for 2 nights (one night, then 2 days in Halong Bay, and a 2nd night back at the Hilton). They let us leave our bags at the hotel when we left so we didn't have to lug everything on our cruise, so that was nice. As both Eliza and Cody had Hilton Gold status, the rooms were upgraded to large suites on the top level of the hotel and breakfast both days was included, which was great and made the hotel even more of a bargain.
The next morning, we got up early, ate at the breakfast buffet, then were picked up at 8am from the hotel for our 2 day, 1 night Halong Bay cruise. We ended up going for the higher end cruise which cost ~$152 per adult and ~$85 for the older kids (Zander, Nash, and Cy were free). There are definitely cheaper cruises out there, but this price was well worth what we got. The cruise included being picked up from the hotel, driven 3+ hours to Halong Bay, all meals and drinks while onboard the boat, which were plentiful and quite enjoyable. There was only one other couple on our ship, otherwise we had the boat to ourselves. It was a huge 10 cabin ship, with a nice open area on top of the boat and ample space on the ship for the kids to run around. We only took up 4 of the cabins.
Halong Bay and Bai tu Long Bay were incredible. The pictures don't really do them justice. It is peaceful and beautiful. It was an amazing experience to be able to be on a luxury ship and to cruise through some of the most breathtaking scenery we had ever seen. We saw some amazing sunsets and had an all around enjoyable time together.
We took kayaks through a floating village, were able to jump off the ship, even from the 2nd story, and took a walk through Surprise cave, which was very "surprising".
We ultimately made our way back to the port at Halong City and took the 3+ hour bus ride back to the Hanoi Hilton Garden Inn. We stayed another night at the Hilton Garden Inn, and saw Kip, Emily, and Cy off the next morning (they had to be back to Singapore to catch their flight back to the US).
We stayed one more night in Hanoi, heading to the Old Quarter for a few hours during the day to finish off our shopping before changing hotels over to the Sheraton Hanoi. We spent some time at the pool at the Sheraton and hit the evening appetizers pretty hard that night. One thing we should never forget is that Nash learned how to swim at the pool at the Sheraton Hanoi. He, all of the sudden, became very brave and confident and decided that he wanted to swim on his own. From this point on, Nash would never look back. We were off the next morning to head home: Toni and Scott back to the States and the Whippermans back to Perth, Australia.
Nash's first strokes as a swimmer.
There's nothing like a little downtime at the pool after a long journey.
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