Cham Island Tours: Cu Lao Cham by Speedboat
Cham Island Tours cross 15 kilometres of the East Sea from Cua Dai port to Cu Lao Cham, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve of eight granite islands ringed by coral reef and marine protected zones. The main island, Hon Lao, holds Bai Lang fishing village, the 17th-century Hai Tang Pagoda, a bustling wet market and the swiftlet nest cliffs the archipelago is known for. Most Cham Island Tours tickets bundle the round-trip boat crossing, the marine park entry fee and lunch at a beachside restaurant.
Archaeologists working on Bai Ong beach recovered Sa Huynh-era pottery dating back roughly 3,000 years, making this eight-island cluster one of the oldest continuously inhabited offshore settlements in central Vietnam.
The Cham Islands sit 15 kilometres east of Cua Dai, a granite archipelago rising from the South China Sea. Hon Lao is the largest and the only island with permanent villages. The others — Hon Dai, Hon Mo, Hon Kho Me, Hon La, Hon Tai, Hon Ong, Hon Kho Con — remain uninhabited.
The Cham people who gave the islands their name used them as a maritime waystation from the seventh century onward. Arab, Persian and Chinese merchant ships anchored in the sheltered bays before running the final leg into Hoi An. Excavations at Bai Lang produced Islamic glass, Tang ceramics and Song dynasty coins. The islands supplied fresh water and, above all, swiftlet nests — the salangane colonies in the sea caves at Hon Kho were a royal monopoly under the Nguyen lords, and nest harvesting continues under state licence today.
UNESCO designated Cu Lao Cham a World Biosphere Reserve in May 2009. The protected zone covers 5,175 hectares of water and reef, sheltering 165 hectares of coral, 500 recorded species of reef fish, and seagrass meadows that support green turtles. That designation shapes everything visitors encounter: the 90,000 VND fee bundles island entry with a marine park conservation charge, and plastic bags have been banned across Tan Hiep Commune since 2009 — the first such ban in Vietnam.
Cham Island Tours grew out of this conservation framework rather than around it. Operators licensed for cham islands snorkeling work within designated zones off Bai Xep and Bai Chong, and a cham island snorkeling tour typically pairs reef time with a stop at Hai Tang pagoda, built in 1758 and rebuilt in 1848 after a storm. Divers on a cham island dive tour reach deeper sites near Hon Dai, where visibility runs highest between March and September.
The village architecture repays attention. Bai Lang keeps a Cantonese-style assembly hall, a French-era well, and the small Marine Protected Area museum documenting the biosphere programme. Ong Ngu temple honours whales — the ca ong cult common along the central coast — and houses skeletal remains recovered from strandings. Fishing sampans still work the channel between Hon Lao and Hon Dai each dawn.
What the archipelago offers is continuity: three millennia of settlement, a monsoon-shaped calendar, and a reef system now managed by the villages that once depended on it for nothing but food. Cham Island Tours tours carry that history alongside the snorkelling.
7 hr
