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Cat Ba Travel: A Complete Guide for Cat Ba tourists - Explore Real Asia
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Cat Ba Travel: A Complete Guide for Cat Ba tourists - Explore Real Asia
April 26, 2021
Known as the pearl of the Gulf of Tonkin, Cat Ba has a pristine and majestic beauty. Every year, Cat Ba island tourism attracts a lot of domestic and international tourists to visit and relax.
Cat Ba Island in Cat Hai District is about 9km from Hai Phong city center. This is a prominent tourist destination in the North with the extremely large number of tourists on holidays or summer.
Visitors can travel to Cat Ba any season, any time of the year because it has a cool and fresh climate all year round. However, summer is always a paradise season for Cat Ba because visitors can freely enjoy themselves in the freshwater and feel a cool green nature dispelling the heat.
A note for you is that if you come to Cat Ba in the summer, you should avoid the weekend. At this time, the number of people is not only crowded but the room rate is also very high.
From here visitors have two options: hydrofoil straight to Cat Ba for 220,000 VND in 45 minutes, or by road through 2 ferry costs 11,000 VND and 6,000 VND per person respectively.
From HaLong
From Ha Long to Cat Ba Hai Phong island, you should take Tuan Chau ferry. The last trip of Tuan Chau - Gia Luan ferry is at 3pm.
Tourists often travel to both Cat Ba and Ha Long. This trend results in Tuan Chau ferry station being often overloaded. Therefore, you should come early to buy tickets.
Ferry ticket price Tuan Chau → Gia Luan is 80k / person.
Taking the ferry to Cat Ba Island is also an interesting experience
Nowadays, in Cat Ba, there are many motels and hotels from popular to luxury scattered in the town. Most of them are right on the coastal road. The number of rooms can completely meet tens of thousands of tourists. calendar. Prices of hotels and motels during the week (Monday - Thursday) are usually 50% lower than weekends (Friday - Sunday), hotel prices in the tourist season are twice as high as in the normal season. Therefore, if you can arrange your time, you should spend about 2 normal days exploring and traveling to Cat Ba, not crowded and can save money
Lan Ha Bay is located in the eastern area of Cat Ba Island, overlooking the Van estuary and adjacent to HaLong Bay. Lan Ha Bay is surrounded by more than 400 small islands creating an extremely poetic scene. The density of rocky mountains here is also quite thick, surrounded by caves with extremely shimmering stalactites. Unlike Ha Long Bay, Lan Ha Bay has up to 139 small and extremely beautiful golden sandy beaches like "green strait" inviting visitors to explore. There are many sandy beaches stretching between two very quiet rocky mountains, really an ideal beach. Under the clear blue sea water are colorful coral reefs such as Van Boi, Van Ha ... Quiet waters such as Monkey Island, Ses Island ... are places where visitors can snorkel.
Located adjacent to HaLong Bay, but the islands of Lan Ha Bay bring their own colors. The islands here, whether large or small, are covered with greenery of trees or vegetation. Nature here is extremely peaceful. If you intend to go by boat to explore the whole bay, it will take up to a few days, but with not long time, you can ask the boat owners to choose the destinations for you to the most reasonable schedule. Specialties in Lan Ha Bay are green mussels, cobia, crabs, and crabs ... There are many rafts raising fish on the bay both for sightseeing and to provide fresh seafood according to the culinary needs of tourists. daily customers.
Monkey Island Beach, also known as Cat Dua beach, is a small island located 2km from Cat Ba town, a beautiful beach that attracts tourists and is the first destination in the tour to explore Lan Ha Bay. Previously, Monkey Island was called Cat Dua Island because there were many wild pineapple trees on the island, which looked delicious but could not be eaten, fishermen often came here to take them to cool drink or dry as medicine. Healing. Currently, this place is called Monkey Island because up to 20 monkeys are released freely, they are quite natural to tourists, so this is also an attractive place for tourists to come here. Monkey Island has a circumference of about 3 km, this is a mountain-shaped island with sandy beaches formed through millions of years of waves and winds bringing sand, rocks, corals, marine shells such as snail shells, shells. oysters, shrimp, crabs enter the foot of the mountain to form a sandy beach stretching for kilometers. Here visitors can walk with the lovely monkeys or drink beer with it, you will feel like you are immersed in nature, enjoy the fresh air and have fun with the monkeys that make the trip. goes to the interesting part.
On the island, there is Cat Dua beach about 1km long, the most beautiful beach in Lan Ha Bay. Cat Dua beach is located in a convenient location with long and unspoiled pure white sand, so many tourists choose to come here to rest, visit and swim. Although the service on the island is not much, it has not served the high demand of tourists, but this is also the ideal destination in the journey to discover Cat Ba.
Coming to Monkey Island, in addition to swimming, visitors can also experience climbing activities to see the panorama of Lan Ha Bay with hundreds of large and small islands growing on the clear blue sea dotted with fine white sand in the distance. eyesight.
Mountain climbing at Monkey Island
Indeed, Monkey Island has become a highlight of Cat Ba tourism with what nature offers, bungalows and tourist services will give you a vacation as expected.
Cat Ba National Park is extremely diverse in terms of ecology, including marine ecosystems, terrestrial forest ecosystems and once mangrove ecosystems. The national forest is located about 30 nautical miles from the town to the East, about 60km from Hai Phong city center. The national park has a total area of 26,240 hectares including islands and seas, converging many different ecosystems. The botanical composition here has about 741 different species, many types of precious wood trees such as mussels, flower chestnut, flower slices, rosewood, kim Giao, white knocker, 23 species of mangrove, seaweed 75 species, phytoplankton 199 species. In particular, in Cat Ba National Park, there are 60 species of rare animals listed in the Red Book of Vietnam.
Cat Ba National Park
Coming to Cat Ba National Park, you feel like getting rid of everyday life with anxiety, busy roads, smog ... to mingle with nature, mountains, plants, the scent of wild flowers. , listen to birds chirping, streams gurgling ... Don't be surprised if you come across mischievous monkeys on the way, maybe they are rare species that only exist here.
There are 3 famous Cat Co beaches on Cat Ba Island that are Cat Co 1, 2, 3 Beach. All three beaches are only a few hundred meters from the town center, which is a favorite place for any tourist. From the center of Cat Ba town, you can easily move to Cat Co 1, 2, 3 beaches by motorbike or tram. The three beaches are not too big but discreet, the sea water is clear and warm. The beaches are connected by a small road that runs along the mountain side. Out of all three beaches, Cat Co 1 beach is the largest and most beautiful, located around the mountains, all year round with waves, clear blue water and fresh air is the place where many tourists choose to rest and swim. Cat Co 2 beach is more peaceful and has something of a mystery. And Cat Co 3 beach has modern colors, has many waves and is quite deep, suitable for good swimmers. By 18:30 every day, no one will swim here anymore to ensure safety because the tide rises very quickly.
Cat Co Beach with clear blue sea, waves all year round
Cannon Fort as a historical proof of the resistance war of our people. In addition to the two cannons, there is also an extremely complex observation system and trench. Built on the top of the mountain, the works are still almost intact despite war and time. Here, you will be amazed with the military structures from the ancient wars with large cannons and an observation system like an observatory in the sky. Than Cong fortress is a historical relic located on the top of a hill with an altitude of 177m, including the battlefield of large sea cannons and a system of tunnels and moats built in the 40s of the 20th century.
The cannon on the Than Cong fortress relic
One very interesting thing when you visit this tourist destination is to enjoy coffee in an airy and cool space. There are few places where people are so close to nature, giving us a sense of pride when standing here.
Enjoy the panoramic view of Cat Ba from the fortress
From the fortress, you will have the opportunity to see the scenic beauty of the Cat Ba archipelago from many angles. At this height, Cat Ba Bay is still extremely lively and bustling with hundreds of fishing boats anchored and floating houses on the sea.
For more information about fascinating tourist attractions in Cat Ba, refer to our article about Top 10 Most Amusing Attractions in Cat Ba - Explore Real Asia
The crayfish in Cat Ba is quite a lot. The features of the superficials here are big, fluffy and shiny, so the food from the surface is always attractive. To get this unique dish, the processor must choose the crayfish carefully. It must be alive, so that when the meat is finished, the meat is intact, not crushed, broken and creates a unique aroma. The processing is really elaborate and meticulous to bring the best taste experience to visitors.
Geoduck is a bivalve mollusk that lives in saltwater. This rare seafood has high nutritional value and special taste. This dish is not as popular as clams, oysters, snails ... but if anyone has once enjoyed it, it is difficult to forget its unique taste and will want to enjoy it more times.
Horseshoe crab has a rich sea flavor that is probably the most popular seafood dish in Cat Ba. They are skillfully processed in many ways creating a rich flavor. The main ingredients for making baked eggs are blood soup, salad, and eggs. No one can resist the deliciousness of this dish no matter how it is processed. Stir-fried horseshoe crab with lemongrass and chilli, fried horseshoe crab or fried with betel leaves, steamed horseshoe crab, fried powder, cartilage.
Blue crab appears quite popular in the seas of Vietnam and is also a specialty dish in Cat Ba. Currently, due to the popularity and great demand of this dish, green crabs in Cat Ba, apart from being caught, are also cultured in brackish lagoons as well as polyculture with other types of seafood. cages in Cat Ba or HaLong areas. Visitors to Cat Ba enjoying seafood dishes here cannot miss this dish because of its nutrition and characteristic sea taste.
