Harlong bay

I booked a trip for two days and one night for 34 dollars. This included absaloutly everything other than drinks. It was about the cheapest priceavalible and id heard some bad reviews about the cheap trips in terms of quality but I decided i would be happy if i was on a boat and the food didnt make me ill.Normaly on cheap trips all the food is just rice and vegetables anyway. Also when you book cheap trips the oparators swap customers about to fill the boats up so there is no guarantee which boat you will be on anyway.
It turned out that i was sharing a boat with some people who thought they had paid for a middle range boat, They paid 40 dollars more than me and they were on the same trip. Whether i was moved to a middle range boat or wether the middle range boats are a hoax is something to debate.
Ha long bay was good. It was crowded in places but still worth going to. On the trip we spent a night on the boat, a trip to a cave, saw a floating village, went kayaking and went swimming in the dark at about 8PM.
The worst part was that the drinks prices on the boat were very high and there was a fine if you brought stuff on the boat from a shop or something. If you brought a bottle of vodka you were meant to pay the crew 25 dollars to drink it. You were even meant to pay the crew a dollar so you could drink a can of coke purchased away from the boat. I ended up storing bottle of water in my bag and taking swiggs when the staff werent looking.
If you bought drinks on the boat the prices were also high, a can or coke was like two dollars.
the boat trip was cheap though and worth it overall. It would probably be much less anoying if they just added like 15 dollars to the price and included a few drinks. It probably works out beter for them and worse for us financialy.but the perspective of the tourists would swing from the boat being stingey with overpriced drinks to the boat being cheap and generous. You can get a good sized beer in a cheap bar for only 30p so its not like everyone on the boat would drink 15 dollars worth of booze in just one evening.