Cat Ba Island

People have lived on the island for a very long time: caves in the limestone, among them Cái Bèo above the harbour, have yielded traces of a coastal fishing culture several thousand years old, one of the earliest known in northern Vietnam. The archipelago sits at the mouth of the approaches to Hai Phong, and the waters around it were the route taken by invading fleets defeated on the Bạch Đằng River in 938 and 1288; through later centuries the islands were the preserve of fishing communities who lived much of their lives afloat.

Under French rule the island was a minor military and fishing outpost, and its hills were fortified, leaving the gun batteries that survive above the town. Its modern identity was shaped by the wars of the twentieth century. The island still holds a spring festival on the harbour front for the start of the season; during the American war the archipelago lay beside the bombed port of Hai Phong and the mined approaches to it, and a hospital and shelter were hollowed into a hillside cave to keep working through the raids.

After reunification Cat Ba remained a quiet district of fishing hamlets and terraced fields. The national park was established in March 1986, the first protected area in the country to include a marine zone. Tourism grew from the 1990s, first as a cheap alternative to the Ha Long Bay cruises and then in its own right, filling the harbour front with hotels; the archipelago became a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 2004 and was added to the Ha Long Bay World Heritage Site in 2023, while a sea bridge and new roads have tied the island group more closely to the mainland.

The island's culture is that of the northern coast rather than of a resort. Fishing families dominate the older settlements, and many kept floating houses moored in the bays until the authorities moved most of them ashore; the rhythm of tides, catches and boat maintenance still orders the week for a large part of the population. Village pagodas and communal houses hold their festivals in the weeks after Tết, and shrines to the sea and to local spirits stand at landing places, where offerings are made before long trips.

Cat Ba town itself is a mixed place: island families, workers from Hai Phong and the delta provinces who come for the season, and a long-standing international climbing community drawn by the limestone of the bay. Climbing arrived in the 2000s and has left a small, informal culture of guides, bars and equipment shops, and it sits alongside kayaking and diving as the island's outdoor pursuits.

Conservation is part of local identity, if sometimes uneasily. The Cat Ba langur, a golden-headed monkey found nowhere else, fell to about forty animals in 2003 before a long-running protection project began to reverse the decline, though fewer than seventy are thought to remain, and the langur appears on signs, shopfronts and school walls across the island. Residents argue among themselves about the pace of hotel building, the pressure on water and the balance between the bay's traffic and the reasons visitors come.

Cat Ba town holds around eight thousand people, and the wider Cát Hải special zone, which takes in the smaller island to the west as well, some forty thousand; the island's population swells many times over on summer weekends. Cat Ba town holds most of the shops, schools and offices; outside it, hamlets sit in pockets of flat ground among the karst, farming small fields, keeping goats on the slopes and working fish ponds and oyster and pearl rafts in the sheltered inlets.

Tourism, fishing and aquaculture are the economy, with a share of residents commuting to work in Hai Phong's factories and port. The season runs roughly from April to September, after which much of the harbour front closes down and families turn to repairs and to the fishing that carries them through winter. Fresh water is a limited resource on limestone, electricity and supplies come across the water, and rubbish disposal is a recurring local complaint.

The day starts early, with the market busy soon after dawn and boats leaving before the heat. Afternoons are slow, and the seafront fills again in the evening with families walking, children swimming off the piers and grills lit along the pavement. In winter the town is markedly quiet, the hotels shuttered and the loudest thing on the harbour the maintenance of engines.

Seafood defines eating here, and it is usually treated simply. Crab, squid, prawns, mantis shrimp and reef fish are kept live until ordered, then steamed with ginger, grilled over charcoal or cooked into a sour soup. Two local specialities carry the island's name beyond it: sá sùng, a sandworm dug from the tidal flats, dried and either fried until crisp or used to sweeten broths, and ngán, a thick-shelled clam from the bay that is grilled, steamed or steeped in rice wine.

The wider Hai Phong tradition supplies the everyday dishes. Bánh đa cua, a crab broth with flat reddish-brown rice noodles, greens and slices of chả, is the standard breakfast; bánh mì, bún and phở stalls open early around the market, and nem cua bể, square crab spring rolls, are a regional favourite. Grilled scallops topped with peanuts and spring onion oil are eaten in quantity with beer.

Drink is straightforward: bia hơi, the fresh light draught beer of the north, poured from a keg on the pavement; rượu, rice spirit sometimes infused with seahorse or herbs at the seafront restaurants; and iced coffee thick with condensed milk in the morning. Honey, oranges and goat meat come off the island's own hills, and roadside stalls sell rolled rice rolls and steamed cakes to the first ferry passengers of the day.