We booked a 3 day 2 night tour to Halong Bay through our hotel, who were using A-Z Queen. Firstly, the boat was decrepid, the staff were drinking all day and extremely rude.
They told us we couldn't stay on the boat that night as planned, that we all had to go to Cat Ba island to stay in the hotel that night. When we get to Cat Ba town, the tour guide disappears. We found him sitting drinking beer opposite us. He told us the hotel had overbooked and there were no rooms for us and to go away and leave him alone. When we told him we had paid money to stay in a hotel, he turned around and hit my female friend, swore at us and punched a male friend in the arm. So we left.
The weird thing was that all the Vietnamese ppl on our tour miraculously got rooms whilst we were left on the street. Even stranger was the fact that the westerners on the A-Z Queen boat who arrived in Cat Ba just before us, had also been told no rooms left for them. Yet the Vietnamese on our tour arrived later and they all had rooms.
They tried to make us stay in someone's house (4 in a random room with 1 bed) whih was infested with insects and had bedbug blood stains on the sheet.
When we said now, they harassed us on the streets for FOUR hours, trying to make us stay in that random house 1km away.
Eventually, we all (12 of us) slept on the streets in Cat Ba and bought $20 tickets to get back to Hanoi the next morning.
It is a MASSIVE scam in Cat Ba - they will not give rooms to Westerners at the weekend (when we enquired, we were told yes they had a room in many places, but as soon as the manager came down everytime we were turned away with 'no room'). Even the next night when 3 ppl stayed on, some restaurants wouldn't even let Western people in, saying the whole restaurant was reserved for the locals (even though it was deserted).
So, STAY CLEAR OF A-Z QUEEN and be careful on Cat Ba because you might well have to sleep on the street and encounter much hostility, even if you go during the week.
Feel free to message me if you have any questions. We hope to spread the word as much as poss so noone else (esp. if you were a girl travelling on your own or something!) has to go through what we went through.






