Ha Long Restaurants

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I took my 3 day/2 night Halong Bay tour with ODC Travel who are based in the Old Quarter in Hanoi. The junk that I spent an overnight stay on was called the Sun Cruise (see my accommodation tip). When we set off to Halong Bay, we first had lunch which was very luxurious of small prawns, potato croquettes, butterfish etc. After visiting some caves and an island we transferred back to the junk and had dinner of stuffed crabs, large fresh prawns hanging off the side of a wine glass, edible flower-shaped vegetables and fresh spring rolls on cocktail sticks stuffed in a pineapple. The food was stunning and much better than I ever anticipated.

If you so choose, your junk can stop by one of the floating fish farms and you can select what type of fish you wnat the crew to cook. For a nominal price you can purchase what ever you wish.

Favorite Dish: try the prawns

The food served on board the junk boat cruise of ODC travels which I joined was quite good and include a balanced meal with vegetables, meat and fresh seafood such as prawns and fish. This is included in the cost of the packaged tour (about US$40 for a 2 day 1 night trip), but you need to pay extra for food and drinks other than the normal meals.

Sun Flower One Hotel has a good restaurant that serves all types of Vietnamese cuisine. We at there during our 3-day guided tour. They had all 20 of us meet at a particular time, then served us family style, with large platters of various tasty dishes and plenty of rice and soup.

Do you know that what we eat on the boat that we considered boring are actually what the locals couldnt really afford to eat?

We have been complaining that we dont really eat seafood until we met the locals.

Fish cake is also considered our seafood dish for the day.

We sat in a all asian table and finish every dish that was served. We see that the rest of the non-asian table couldnt finish their food and wish that they would offer us their untouched food.

Overlooking Halong Bay, this restaurant exuded casual elegance and style in every way. From the colourful Vietnamese lanterns hanging from the ceiling (see pics) to the live
orchestra playing traditional Vietnamese instruments, dining at the Royal Restaurant was certainly a pleasant experience.

Favorite Dish: We had some sort of set menu as we were in a tour group. The dishes themselves ranged from average to good (and I would say that our expectations had been raised by the excellent food we had had in Hanoi) but none were actually bad. Certainly the servings were large, so we had plenty to eat.

I especially enjoyed the piquant beef salad with crushed peanut and lime and the tomato & shredded lettuce salad. The prawn fritters served with spicy chilli sauce on the side, were light & delicious.

Service was attentive and helpful at all times.

Toilets were clean and comfortable.

Your cruise ship will take you to a floating fishing village. The idea is to buy some additional seafood to enjoy for dinner or lunch.
The fisher people appear to live on the sea itself as the islands nearby are very rocky.

The structure we visited was a large raft- we climbed off our boat onto it to see the live
sea-food swimming there.
They had a number of exotic species: giant squid, some varieties of fish,several types of crabs, prawns, large shell-fish (including one as large as a dinner plate, with orange shell), and even a couple of man-of-wars.

Favorite Dish: Live Seven star Garoupa-US$50/- per kilo
(they were huge!)
Clams-US$9-12 per kilo
(lovely when steamed with garlic)
The cooks on board the Bai Tho Cuise served them up to us for dinner.

Dine in style at the ship's dining room. Done up in dark wood with large tables, comfortable sofa chairs done up in floral fabrics - the setting is reminiscent of the good old days when travelling on the Orient Express Railcar was all in rage!
We felt special and pampered.

Favorite Dish: Crabs-freshly caught and lightly steamed
Fried squid balls-chopped squid, rolled into balls and breaded on the outside, fried to perfection!
Accompanied by a lovely glass of Chianti or Reisling-aah, heaven!

Lunch, dinner and breakfast were included in our cruise.