Cat Ba is the largest island in Ha Long Bay, where we’ve been the past 3 weeks. Evalynn and I decided we wanted to visit for two reasons. It has a National Forest and we haven’t experienced enough nature in Vietnam. Also, we really wanted to spend some time on the water, cruising among the pinnacle rocks that make Ha Long Bay a UNESCO heritage site.
Finding a good source of information regarding travel to Cat Ba Island is a little tricky. The inbound bay where the ferry arrives from Ha Long is on the opposite coast of the island from Cat Ba Town. And although we had considered a BnB in the National Forrest, the logistics of getting there and the limited selection of food options caused us to decide against that option.
We decided the best way to get the assurances we wanted before travelling was to find an AirBnB that had reviews indicating that they could advise us in making travel arrangements. Our host arranged for a taxi to meet us at the ferry terminal and drive us to our accommodations. Here is the breakdown of our trip:
Taxi Sapphire Hotel to Tuan Chau Harbor ($10USD)
Tuan Chau Harbor to Gia Luan Harbor ($6 for 2 people)
Taxi to Cat Ba Town ($15USD)
Mountain View Room ($73.87 for 3 nights)
Man, I thought 300,000VND ($15USD) was a lot of money for a cab compared to what we usually spend in Vietnam, but that drive from Gia Luan Harbor to Cat Ba town was brutal on the car and on us. The roads were thrashed.
Saturday, we had a Viator Hospital Cave/National Park tour ($29USD/person). Turns out the guards at the Hospital Cave closed shop due to low turn-out, so the experience was climbing stairs up to the entrance and imagining what it might’ve looked like. We spent most of the rest of the day hiking up mountains until we just couldn’t anymore. Sunday, we booked a private tour with Cat Ba Freedom Tourism to go kayaking though a cave system ($45USD/person). You can find this tour for cheaper, but we chose a private excursion because after the exhausting tour the day before, we wanted 4 hours instead of 8. We’re grateful we did. Captain Teng was a spectacular tour guide, even if most of his English was poorly translated by Google.
Some more gotchas… many of the great restaurants listed on TripAdvisor were closed. There are very few options for lunch. We went to the same bad restaurant 3 times, each of us trying 3 different menu options, because there weren’t accessible alternatives. We also didn’t find much in the way of groceries.
At night on the weekend though the restaurants were slammed. Everybody comes out and it’s very social. There are 4 floating restaurants on the bay that you can access via boats. We didn’t try, but we wanted to. We just ran out of time.
For the return trip to Ha Long Bay, we caught the same taxi back across the horrid island roads to realize that the 11:30am ferry is seasonal and our next option was at 1pm. So, we hired a private boat for $40USD to take us immediately. That’s $36 to avoid sitting at the harbor in 90°F weather for 2 hours. It also was about 30 minutes faster than the ferry and was a cool experience.
So that was Cat Ba.
Tips:
Green Mango has some killer Stir Fry
If you can’t find travel/local information you trust online, find a hotel or BnB host who will help you figure things out
Google is unreliable. Open/Closed/hours are very questionable right now.