5 Best Hotels in Halong Bay and North-Central Vietnam, Vietnam

With a prime location on the seafront and many rooms with ocean-facing balconies, this is one of the better options in Cat Ba Town. While visiting guests may choose to eschew the in-house karaoke, there's much to recommend the hotel otherwise. Indeed, with its sweeping staircase extending upward from the lobby, it has a certain air of grandeur that other lodging options lack. Rooms are comfortable and clean and come equipped with decent mod cons, such as minibar and TV, and the hotel's café is a nice place to enjoy a Vietnamese coffee while admiring the outlook.

These small but quite nice bungalows lie at the foot of the mountain that houses the Hang Mua or Mua Cave. This guarantees that the area is always quite full of tourists and the hotel accommodates this with tons of selfie-worthy knickknacks. The bungalows have porches as well as outdoor and indoor showers. The restaurants on-site are also reasonably priced and filling.

The bungalows at Mac Lake are possibly the nicest in the park with good facilities including hot water and en suite bathrooms complementing the idyllic surroundings. Serene Mac Lake is one of the prettiest areas of the national park and the accommodations are certainly atmospheric. Adding to the general conviviality of the location is a lively common area. Traditional music is often performed here, and regular bonfires also make for lively gatherings. Dormitory accommodations in a large stilt house are also available for groups. To save energy there's no hot water in the stilt house, so cold showers are the order of the day.

These bungalows offer amazing views, indoor and outdoor bathrooms, live traditional music on Saturday, and an outdoor pool and barbecue garden. This is an excellent choice for couples or groups traveling together. If you have the chance, take a farming tour to better understand the culture and customs in Ninh Binh.

In the small village of Viet Hai on the eastern side of the island, these simple concrete-and-thatch bungalows are the very definition of a getaway, and the surrounding landscape of rice fields and the nearby seascape of Lan Ha Bay are as enticing as they come. While Cat Ba Town throngs with tourists and throbs with the often-strangulated noise of karaoke, here the peaceful rhythms of island life come to the fore. The accommodations, arrayed around a stream on the edge of the forest, are nothing fancy, but rooms are comfortable and clean. Getting here involves a boat ride from Ben Beo pier near Cat Ba Town to Viet Hai, followed by a bicycle ride.