Overall, the hotel is just mediocre. I think it is the number one in Halong city, because there is none better to compare. Generally, the hotel staff were cold and could not be bothered to give you a good service, because they don't have to. You can complain all you want, but tourist will still stay in this hotel, because this is the most decent hotel that you can find in Halong city, the others are either more jaded or you end up staying in some converted coffee-shop place.

The interior is 80s, but is it clean and spacious. Point to note: we requested for a knife to cut the some fruits we bought from the market. The hotel staff asked us to go down to the restaurant to get it and sign our name. They will not send it to the room. This is the first time we heard of this sort of reply in a hotel.

We booked a relatively expansive cruise trip to Halong Bay via the hotel, expecting that since we booked from the hotel, there should be no glitches. However, our overall experience was marred as the boat operator kept on harassing us(just the 3 of us booked the whole boat) to buy goods from them. When we just bought some small items, apparently the boat operator was not happy and showed it to us when we had lunch in their boat (we booked for lunch which was not cheap either). When we have paid so much for this boating trip, especially via the hotel, I had expected us to be able to enjoy the Halong cruise in peace and not be harrassed throughout the whole trip.

Location: it is located far away from the Halong city night market. But you can still walk to it or take a cab(which will attempt to overcharge you).

Breakfast buffet: decent

Overall, you are basically stuck with this hotel, until a better/newer hotel comes up that truly cares about their customer.

Hotel was clean but the property is a bit dated. Not sure why this is number one but I have noting to compare it to in Halong. The food was very average and the rooms were big but very 1980's.

Rooms are well furnished and large.The breakfast has a large spread of western and Vietnamese foods.I think it was low season when we arrived and the hotel gave us a suite :)

The only low points are that the hotel is located away from the town and you need to get a taxi or car to bring you around. Skip the spa services in the hotel, I'm sure you can find better ones outside.The room also did not have an ethernet cable although it was supposed to.

This was really a 1st class hotel.
We stayed here just 1 night as part of a small group tour and it really was better than 4star. Huge spacious rooms and the breakfast was lovely.
One word of warning though. The hotel check everything in your room is still there when you check out. 1 of our group was made to wait whilst the staff located a face cloth. After 10mins the hotel confirmed that yes it was there all alnong and was caught up with other laundry. Very embarassing for the people checking out.