Cycad Cruise

Everything on Cycad’s equipment list checks out against more than the operator’s word. The pool, the hot tub, the spa, the gym, the kayaks, a balcony on the cabins. Six for six, which is rare on a 24-cabin boat.

Nobody has written about it in English. No review in the collection we read, no Google average, no rating count, and so no score anywhere on this page.

The equipment, and the size nobody gives

Twenty-four cabins, verified. The hull is steel and the operator dates it to 2025, which they alone state, so read the age as their claim. If it is right, this boat has one season behind it.

Verified means the pool and the hot tub exist, and it does not mean they are big. No source publishes a dimension for either, and on a hull with two dozen rooms a pool can be four strides across. One of the operator’s own photographs shows a hot tub lit up on a timber deck at dusk, so that one is real. The passenger capacity, the number of decks and the length of the boat are all unpublished. We checked for each.

Cabin floor area is worse than unpublished. Three sources say 36 m², three say 46, two say 22 and two say 35. That is a twofold spread with no tie-break, and none of the sources says which grade it belongs to. Get the square metres for the grade named on your invoice.

The rate table

Read from a published table on 6 August 2026, per cabin for one night. The sea-view deluxe is $295 and takes two. The junior balcony is $380, the executive balcony $440. The family balcony sleeps four at $630. Above those, the ambassador suite is $650 for two and the presidential suite $1,105. All of these are the highest published rates rather than an operator tariff, so a quote should come in below them.

Two things fall out of that table. The family room is not the cheap route aboard: $630 across four people is $157 each, against $147 each for two in the sea-view deluxe, so the family cabin costs more per head than the cheapest double. And the per-person figure listings advertise, $148 from listings on 7 August 2026, is half of $295 to within fifty cents. We read that as a listing engine halving a cabin rate rather than quoting a fare, which matters because $295 is a ceiling. A real per-person entry price is under $148, not at it.

The presidential suite at $1,105 is three and a half times the cheapest cabin, and nobody publishes a floor area or any account of what the money buys.

A question about the cheapest cabin

A balcony on every cabin is verified. Then look at the grade names: junior balcony, executive balcony, family balcony, and at the bottom of the ladder a sea-view deluxe. If all 24 rooms had a balcony, naming three grades after the feature would be strange. Our reading is that the $295 room may have a window rather than a door, and that the verified balcony claim describes most of the boat instead of all of it. That is a reading and not a fact. Ask the question before you book the cheapest grade, because it is the one difference on this sheet that will change how the afternoon feels.

Where it goes, and which pier

The route data names four places in the bay: the floating village at Vung Vieng, the water around Cap La, Cong Do, and the cave at Thien Canh Son. Four stops over two days is normal for Bai Tu Long rather than thin. There is less to see here than on the main Ha Long channel and that is the reason people choose it. If the bay is still open for you, the three are not the same trip.

The fifth entry in that list is not a place in the bay at all. It is the Sun World international harbour, and we read it as the international cruise port on the Bai Chay side. That reading is ours, because the operator publishes no departure point for this boat, and it is worth pinning down: most boats working Bai Tu Long board at Hon Gai Pier, which is across the Bai Chay bridge from the cruise port. Tuan Chau Marina is a third option twenty minutes from the port in traffic. A driver given the word “Ha Long” will pick one of the three. Have the pier written into your booking and say the name to him yourself.

What one season means for you

The review void here has an explanation that Diana and Amanda do not have: a boat that entered service in 2025 has had one summer to collect anything at all, and a single review in our collection, in a language we cannot read, is what a first season looks like from outside.

That lowers the mystery without lowering your exposure. Nobody has described the crew or rated the food. In our experience new boats here arrive with good rooms and a service routine that takes a season to settle, and we cannot tell you which stage this one has reached.

Who it suits

Couples who want the quiet bay and a hot tub on a small ship, and who are comfortable being early. Against the rest of the recently launched boats and the best-value list, $295 for a double with a verified pool on deck is a strong number, and it is the argument for taking the risk.

Who should look elsewhere

Anyone who needs the record before the deposit. The other boats in this bay include operators with years of English reviews behind them, and if you would spend the trip wondering what you had missed, spend the money there instead.