Calypso Cruise

Calypso is a 55-metre boat of 20 cabins on the Cat Ba side of the water, built for about 50 guests and looked after by a crew of 18. Oriental Sails runs it as one of two identical boats, Calypso I and Calypso II, so put the number on your confirmation. A cabin is 20 m², which is small.

Two grades appear on halongbaytours.com’s rate sheet, read on 6 August 2026: deluxe at $275 for the cabin for one night, deluxe balcony at $290. Both take two people, and on the two-night trip they are $520 and $540. Fifteen dollars buys the balcony. In our view that makes the cheaper room pointless, and you should read $290 as the price of this boat for a night. The eight balcony cabins are rooms 201 to 208 on the second floor; the deluxe cabins below have large windows, and four connecting pairs among them are sold as Family Deluxe.

Split two ways, the $275 deluxe is about $138 each for two sharing and the balcony room $145. The operator’s own site, read on 10 August 2026, sells the two-day trip at $150 a person in a double cabin and the three-day at $300, with $400 a cabin added for a single guest on the longer trip. One child up to five sharing with two adults sails free, and from six to eleven pays 75%.

There is a pool on the sun deck, free to use, and a jacuzzi beside it, along with included kayaking. Drinks are extra, and so is the minivan from Hanoi, which the operator runs daily from the centre between 09:00 and 09:30; Origin Vietnam charged $25 a guest for the round trip in August 2026.

What goes wrong on a Calypso trip?

The transfer. The worst review we read is about the pickup. A guest was sent a pickup location, then received a second location from a different WhatsApp number at roughly the hour they were due to board, and had to find a taxi across town to make the departure. The operator’s current programmes board from the wharf at Tuan Chau, by tender between 12:00 and 13:00. Fix the pickup before you travel: one address, one phone number, confirmed the day before, in writing.

One guest describes the final morning as breakfast at 07:00, an early lunch at 09:00 and checkout at 10:00, and gave the trip one star for it. A four-star reviewer held back the fifth star over the food.

The good reviews are specific enough to be useful. One guest counted 13 passengers aboard and describes the boat as quiet, a quarter of the roughly 50 it is built for, and the low count is part of what people like. Another writes that the boat is not the newest, then spends the rest of the review on how clean it was and how much they liked the wood. Drinks are charged separately and one reviewer suggests carrying cash to settle the bar bill at the end. One party of Indian travellers singles out the pure vegetarian and vegan Indian cooking, which is worth knowing because that is not a request every kitchen in this bay handles well.

One more thing from the reviews. A guest writes about sailing on Calypso 1, which matches the operator’s two-boat fleet, so the number belongs on your confirmation.

Where does Calypso go?

The Cat Ba side of the archipelago rather than the main channel, all inside Lan Ha Bay. On the operator’s one-night programme you reach the Bright and Dark cave at 15:00, rowed through by a local boatman, then swim off the boat or in the sun-deck pool before a cooking demonstration. The next morning a 20-minute bus ride from Gia Luan pier takes you to Quan Y, the cave that hid a military hospital, before check-out between 09:00 and 09:30. You are back at Tuan Chau between 10:30 and 11:15.

The two-night version adds a day boat: Viet Hai village, 5 km inland, reached by bicycle or electric car, then lunch aboard, the cave area at Tai Queo and a swim at Ba Trai Dao, back on Calypso by 16:00. It is the strongest argument for two nights over one. If the choice of bay is still open, the three are not the same trip.

Who it suits

Couples and small groups who want the quiet side of the archipelago for under $300 a cabin for a night, who are not troubled by an older boat that guests describe as worn but clean, and who will nail the transfer down themselves.

Who should look elsewhere

Anyone who cannot absorb a chaotic pickup. That is the one failure that shows up in the reviews with real consequences attached. If 20 m² also sounds tight, the small boats and the best-value list hold larger cabins for the same money or not much more: on the rates read on 6 August 2026, Sena lists a 25 m² balcony room at $286 a night and Indochine a 32 m² junior suite at $310.

Where these facts come from

The length, capacity, crew, cabin layout, programmes, prices per person, single supplement, child rates and minivan are from the operator’s sites, calypsocruises.vn read on 10 August 2026 and orientalsails.com read on 14 October 2026; four sources give 20 cabins. The cabin rate sheet is from a listing read on 6 August 2026. Guest remarks are from Google reviews.