Vietnam TravelTravel Special FeaturesVietnam - A Coastal JourneyCat Ba Island - Fantasy Island

Cat Ba Island - Fantasy Island

With total area of 354 sp km, the mountainous island of Cat Ba is the largest island in Ha Long Bay. Located 20 km east of the port city of Hai Phong, Cat Ba is a tropical paradise of white sand beaches, waterfalls, caves, and limestone peaks, which rise like gnarled, blackened fingers from the lush greenery.

Haft of the island was declared a national park in 1986 - wonderful news given the island’s tropical evergreen forest and coastal waters are home to 15 kinds of mammals, 21 species of birds, 200 species of fish, and 640 species of plants.

In the park you'll find overgrown jungle trails, hidden grottoes and a coastline crinkled into spectacular, secluded coves. Rising to a height of 331 meters above sea level, the island's limestone hills offer stunning views of narrow valleys, jungle, and the surrounding, island-strewn bay. According to local lore, Cat Ba Island was once ruled by a queen who held court inside Trung Tang Cave. Even today, local people place offering of money and incense inside this 300 metre-long cave, which served as a bomb-proof hospital during American War. But, for the most part, Trung Tang is left to the bats and to the tourists, who come to peer at its stalactites and stalagmites, and to linger in the cool stillness.

Stone tools and bones reveal that people inhabited the island's limestone caves at least 6,000 years ago. Today, the island's 12,000 residents survive mainly through fishing and tourism, although they also cultivate rice on the fruit trees. Most of the islanders live on the southern coast, with the biggest settlement, the fishing village of Cat Ba, located on the island's southernmost tip. Two of the island's finest beaches, known simply as Cat Co One and Cat Co Two, are but a brief stroll from this village.

If you spend all of your time on these beaches, however, you're missing the best of what Cat Ba has to offer. Delve into the park's magnificent, old-growth forest and you'll discover colossal, twisted tree trunks hung with vines as thick as a women's wrist, black and yellow spiders which belong in a cartoon, and shimmering inky butterflies that sail past, big as canaries. High overhead, the constant but ever varied clicks and whirs of the insects provide the percussion to the haunting solos of unseen birds.

In the national park you can hire a guide to lead you through the forest and down to the coast, where a small fishing boat will be waiting to whisk you off to deserted coves. After five hours on a steep jungle path, the first glimpse of the ocean-a sliver of aquamarine between the slate-grey limestone hills-will take your breath away

See more in Hai Phong City