Cù Lao Chàm

Cham Island is a daily tour from Da Nang or Hoi An and you can order the tour from any tour / ticket agency or from your own hotel. BUT. Take it as a daily tour is a waste. I wish I had time to stay a week there. I stayed for one night and time there passed by so slowly, it was just a slow calming stay.

Cham Island and the surrounding uninhabited islands are of a Biosphere Reserve. To go there, it takes a speed boat trip from Cua Dai, Hoi An. Whether you buy the tour from Da Nang or Hoi An, you will have to start from here. The main boat port on the Island is very crowded with tourists going on daily tour. There is a sea food market there with swimming sea food, just like any other sea food places in Vietnam, and you can eat fresh sea food. I don't know what people do in a daily tour because I stayed in a home stay in Bai Huong beach, on another side of the island, so I didn't stay in the central boad port for long. I know that some people chose to change boat so that they could see the birds island. We hopped on two xe ôm men and go several km to the homestay. The road was not at all ideal for a motorbike ride, it's very thin and up and down all the time. We paid something like 120,000VND for two motorbike ride (5,17USD) - but I don't remember if it was for one or both, may be for both.

Going speed boat to Cham Island

They brought us to Bai Huong beach, and it is a village with no house number or address, no one had any idea where Bai Huong homestay was, because Bai Huong basically means Huong beach - the beach where they all lives on. Eventually I had to call the homestay and provide the name of the owner, there, that is where they know who was that.

Khanh's homestay named Bai Huong homestay on booking.com, and he is the only homestay owner in Bai Huong that listed his name on the internet. No one has any idea how to do that and how to receive tourists from the internet. But he was lucky he has a friend who works in Hoi An center as a tourism worker that created the account for him. I guess he has grown more professional as I found this on the internet: https://homestaybaihuong.com/

But you know what? You don't even have to book anything. Just show up there, Khanh's neighbors are keen on hosting you for very cheap price too! It's just that they don't know how to list themselves on the internet. Some fisherman was kind of sad when he told me ¨We provide food and snorkeling as cheap too¨. So, just take it adventurously and show up.

We had our 'ocean view' bed room

Ocean view bedroom views to the Ocean

It is such a simple house, don't imagine fancy resort ocean view, it was only like 10$ for a night. You have to share a tiny bathroom with everyone, because the infrastructure on the Islands don't allow a lot of bathroom. But I don't know for now, maybe they have upgraded their homestay.

The homestay has a green trees garden, swings and hammocks. We could just lay down everywhere under the shadow of the trees. It felt like a cool fresh oasis because put a step out there and it's boiling sun.

During the day time, Bai Huong beach receives daily tour groups from inland too, the day I stayed there they were mainly Chinese or Korean. They were excited to the fresh seafood, and they ate at local restaurants. We thought we would want to try some local restaurant at night, so we told the homestay that we would not eat home that night. Very bad idea, because after lunch when the daily tour people went away, all the local restaurants just closed. Actually, we were one of the very few tourists that stayed over night.

Souvenirs from the Ocean - 10,000VND (0,43 USD) for a starfish

When you buy these Ocean souvenirs they will give you a tote bag to keep them instead of a nylon bag. I heard that nylon bags are banned on Cham Island, as it is a Biosphere Reserve. There are some strange Shells that were polished very nicely, I bought one of them that looks like a cone, for 150,000 (6,47$) and it is now on our altar.

Sea food you can order for lunch: Crabs, sea urchin and a squid. Sea food is said to be good for sex life, I guess because of their shape?! They sell dried sea urchins too. That sounds like something Asian tourists would like to buy and soak into heavy booze.

An ocean viewed temple very close to the homestay

When the sun went down and the tide went away, this lovely river showed and become a place for ducks. It got dark very quickly as there was hardly any public light on the island.

Getting hungry, we walked back to the village to see everyone has closed and there was no food anywhere. How losers we felt :))) but luckily, Bai Huong homestay had a dinner BBQ and there was still food for us. Therefore we joined, and it was such an awesome meal

We got crabs, shrimps, squids, fish, and a lot of more stuffs that filled us up. This meal was included in the room price, and for its cheap price, it was very abundant.

(to be continued)