Cat Ba Island Tour

Cat Ba island

The island contains one of Vietnams most beautiful national parks and is home to tropical and fresh water swamp forest, Waterfalls, lakes and hills as well as an astonishing range of plant and bird life.

The largest island in the Ha Long Bay archipelago, Cat Ba Island offers spectacular sea and island scenery with opportunities for trekking through its national park.

The archipelago consists of one main island, covering 345sq.km, and 366 smaller ones approximately 70miles (120km) south east of Hanoi. There is a great diversity of landscapes and ecosystems, including offshore coral reefs, sandy beaches, mangrove forest, freshwater swamp forest, small freshwater lakes and forested hills. The scenery is spectacular in the karst limestone areas on the main island where there are numerous waterfalls, caves and grottos. There are three main types of vegetation in the archipelago: tropical evergreen forest on the hills, freshwater swamp forest at the foot of the hills and coastal mangrove forest.

The fauna has not been studied in detail but the island does support a subspecies of Francois' monkey. Other mammals known to occur include leopard , leopard cat, rhesus macaque, pigtail macaque, bear macaque, mainland Serow, Sambar, Indian muntjak Muntiacus, European otter, large Indian civet, black giant squirrel, belly-banded squirrel, Swinhoe's striped squirrel, Asiatic brush-tailed porcupine and Horsfield's leaf-nose bat. The islands lie on a main migration route for many species of waterfowl. The beaches and mangrove forests provide feeding and roosting sites for a large number of birds during the migration season, including several species of ducks, geese and shorebirds. Resident and migrant species include little grebe, common cormorant, spotbill duck, white-breasted water-hen, water cock and pheasant-tailed jacana. Forest birds include Oriental pied hornbill, a very rare species for northern Viet Nam. Reptiles include Gecko, Python and hawksbill turtle. More than 100 bird species have been recorded.

Click here for full details of this Tour