Beaches Near Hanoi

Do Son is the nearest stretch of real coast to Hanoi, on a peninsula reaching out below Haiphong, and the drive takes about two hours on the expressway. The Rong hills run down the spine of it. The French laid the town out as a seaside resort in the colonial period, which is why the older hotels and villas look the way they do, and it still divides into three zones, each with its own bathing beach backed by hills and pine. One thing to know before you commit a day to it: this is Red River delta water, so it is brown with silt rather than blue. People come for the sea air, the seafood and the quiet out of season.

Cat Ba is the largest island in the Halong archipelago and the only one with a proper town, reached by ferry or by the cable car across from Haiphong. Its beaches are the three Cat Co coves on the east side of town, cut into the limestone and linked to each other by a walkway pinned to the cliff face. Cat Co 1 and Cat Co 3 are the larger pair and carry the hotels; Cat Co 2 is the quiet one. They are small, and in July and August they are full, which is the trade-off for swimming under karst cliffs in clear water. Most of the island behind them is Cat Ba National Park.

Tuan Chau is joined to the Halong mainland by a causeway, which makes it the easiest beach in the bay to reach without getting on a boat. The beach is artificial, about two kilometres of imported sand, and the island behind it has been built out with resorts, villas and restaurant strips. Jet skis and kayaks run off the sand. It is also the main harbour for bay cruises, so in practice it works better as a base for the boat trip than as a day at the beach. Worth knowing: the island stages dolphin and seal shows, if you would rather not spend money at a performing-animal attraction.

Bai Chay is the beach in Halong City itself, on the tourist side of the bridge, and like Tuan Chau it is man-made: a little over 500 metres of imported sand laid along the shore. That is the honest description of it, and it is still the most convenient swim in the bay, with the night market, the Sun Wheel on the hill above and the cruise piers all within walking distance. It is about two and a half hours from Hanoi on the expressway, and it is at its busiest from June to August when domestic tourism peaks.

Thinh Long is in Hai Hau district in Nam Dinh province, and it is not near Hanoi in any useful sense: the fastest route still takes about two hours. What it is, is a working piece of delta coast rather than a resort. The sand runs flat and very wide at low tide, fishing boats are drawn up on it, and the visitors are almost entirely Vietnamese families. Seafood is cooked to order in the village behind the sea wall and very little English is spoken. Like Do Son, the water here is delta water and carries silt, so come for the coast rather than the swim.

Ti Top is the beach most people are picturing when they think of Halong Bay: a short crescent of sand on a limestone island, reachable only as a stop on a bay cruise, with clear water and no road to it. Behind the sand a staircase of a few hundred steps climbs to a viewpoint over the islands, which is the real reason boats stop here. The beach faces west, so it falls into shade in the afternoon. Ho Chi Minh named the island after Gherman Titov, the Soviet cosmonaut, who visited it with him in 1962.