After all day visiting the beautiful rock formations in the bay - I don't remember all that much about the hotel. It was well maintained, and recently decorated. The room was comfortable. Breakfast buffet was much more "native" than touristy. I'm more western, and had trouble finding food that appealed to me. We traveled with some Asian families, and they were impressed with the buffet. The town doesn't have much going on after dark.

We stayed here on a family trip to Vietnam for the day. The rooms were nice and appeared clean and we had the most spectacular view of Halong Bay. The front desk people were cordial and set us up in our rooms in no time. The rooms we stayed in were what I would classify as 3-3 1/2 stars (the decor was nice and appeared relatively new and the room was neat and tidy). The breakfast buffet selection was great--they had a vast selection of Vietnamese as well as Western-type food (i.e. sausage, eggs, bacon, etc.). The food was decent. Overall, I thought the place was a great stay until my sister saw a roach near the pastries during that morning. I am big on cleanliness so were it not for that, I would have rated this hotel above average to excellent.

Aesthetically, the place is a nice place to stay, but the roach incident ruined it for me.

After coming back from a trip through Vietnam, the Heritage Halong Bay was the most disappointing part of our holiday.

The room was small, dated and the air conditioning smelled unpleasant. The restaurant was also dated and the food wasn't of a very good standard. The bar was musty and the only customers were the local 'ladies'. The pool was dirty and uninviting.

Halong City itself is unappealing. If you are going to visit Halong Bay I would recommend doing an overnight boat trip out on the bay. The boats looked fabulous, and we are very disappointed that we missed out on this opportunity. Try to give the 'city' a miss, the bay itself is so stunning - stick to that!