No, no...our boat looked nothing like those above. Once we left the traffic of oceanliners and fishing boats behind and were pointed into a vast, foggy landscape of rocky islet after islet, I realized why even Uncle Ho himself wrote of Halong Bay, "It is the wonder that one cannot impart to others."
So while I've done my best to capture the experience, you will have to visit yourself, to understand how incredible this expanse of over 3,000 scattered limestone rock formations is. A half-billion years BC, tectonic movement created sharp mountains on the bay floor, and a quarter-billion years after that, the mountains were pushed up to form part of the mainland. At this point weathering by wind and water carved out caves and other cool features in the limestone. Then around 10,000 BC, the whole area flooded again, creating the present-day landscape. And that is the extremely edited, English-major version of Halong Bay's completely badass geological history. 
After a couple hours of cruising, we entered a quiet bay and met up with a boat similar to ours, to collect a few more passengers. Then a man on a motorized raft showed up towing a mess of kayaks, which we used to go exploring! 
Kayaking the sea caves—seeing monkeys playing in the jungle, schools of flying fish zip above the still water, and jellyfish blubbering around within a paddle's length—was the highlight of the trip for me. The sky darkened, raft guy hitched up his cargo and motored off, and our junk cruised on to the area where we'd drop anchor for the night.
It was so nice to fall asleep to the slight rocking of the boat. I may have slept more soundly had there not been cockroaches in the room. But we were in nature...gotta coexist, right? The next morning after breakfast, we docked at a larger islet and toured a huge cave. Our guide was especially keen on pointing out the rock formations he thought looked dirty (unpictured, sorry).
We passed a fishing village on our way back out into open water (about 1,600 people live in floating fishing villages amongst the islands of Halong Bay), then eventually arrived at the beach where our group would be spending the night in huts!
After happy hour and dinner in the common area, we played a bit of Phase 10 with a great couple from Germany. Then all too early in the morning, after a huge breakfast, we had to board a sketchy, sketchy raft:
...to be shuttled to a bigger boat, to be shuttled to our sleeping boat, which took us back to the port, to get on the bus to go back to Hanoi. Whew. There were posters plastered around establishments in the Halong Bay area, urging visitors to go online and vote for Halong Bay to be one of the "New 7 Wonders of Nature"; the bay is one of 28 finalists in the contest.
And with this, I am almost finished posting on Vietnam!
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