Cruzeiro diurno Daiichi: Baía de Lan Ha e Vila Viet Hai

It’s really impressive the scale of Daichii operations, with them picking up locals along the way, and dropping off tourists at their respective hotels and overnight/ day trip boat tours. However, they messed up our day trip because they “forgot to book our pickup bus”, and our trip turned into a rushed half day trip. It took a 2 hour bus from Hanoi, to a ferry, to another bus, to get to Cat Ba harbor to board our island tour boat. Since they messed up our pickup, we only got to go to Monkey Island out of the 4 stops the day trip entailed. Lunch on the boat was good though. They had a fisherman come pick us up at sea so that we could catch the ferry and bus heading back to Hanoi in the afternoon. What was supposed to be 6 hours at sea turned into 2 hours because they messed up our pickup. Our tour guide was really personable and funny, and I wish we had more time in Hanoi to take the overnight stay on the boat the operator offered us because they messed up our pickup.

This is quite a basic cruise, and we booked under Dachii Cruise, but in the end, another company brought us. It seems like they maximize occupancy by filling all the cruises to capacity, which is not very enjoyable. Monkey Island is kind of a waste of time! It's not nice, and there aren't many monkeys.