Travel from Cat Ba Island to Phong Nha

By bus the journey from Cat Ba Island to Phong Nha is scheduled to take from 13 to 15 hours depending upon which service you take.

Bus Times from Cat Ba Island to Phong Nha

There are currently 9 bus services a day from Cat Ba Island to Phong Nha with Full Moon Travel Asia available to book online.

Buy Tickets from Cat Ba Island to Phong Nha

Use the Search Box below to buy your tickets from Cat Ba Island to Phong Nha.

Cat Ba Island Bus Stop

Full Moon Travel Asia services from Cat Ba Island to Phong Nha depart in front of the Full Moon Travel Asia Office, 213 Một Tháng Tư, TT. Cát Bà, Cát Hải, Hải Phòng 350000, Vietnam.

Ninh Binh Bus Stop

Full Moon Travel Asia services from Cat Ba Island to Phong Nha terminate at Central Backpackers Hostel – Phong Nha.

About Travel to Phong Nha

Phong Nha is a popular riverside village located in Central Vietnam, 44 km by road to the west of Dong Hoi City. The reason Phong Nha is so popular with visitors is its scenic riverside location on the edge of the 857.54 square kilometre Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park, which is famous for its cave systems.

Staying Phong Nha Village

There are around 100 hotels and guesthouses in, or close to, Phong Nha Village. Compared to the number of permanent residents in the village, around 3,000, the number of hotels is fairly large and an indicator of the extent to which Phong Nha Village is focused on tourism.

Accommodation in Phong Nha generally represents excellent value for money. Room rates vary from around $10 USD for a room in a basic small hotel, to just over $50 USD a night for the most expensive resort in the area, Phong Nha – Lèn Chùa Ecostay. For a private room overlooking the river in hotels such as Funny Monkeys Homestay expect to pay around $25 USD a night.

Phong Nha also has a wide range of restaurants, and a few bars. Most of the bars and restaurants are focused on the tourist trade, although cheaper local food is available at food stalls which are set up nightly on the main road through the village. For ‘international cuisine’ try The Villas Restaurant or Ganesh Indian Restaurant Phong Nha. For modern Vietnamese food try Lantern Vietnamese Restaurant or The Rice House.

Visiting Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park

There is a lot to see and do in Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park. You don’t need to pay an entrance fee to enter the park as a whole, but you do need to pay for transport to, and entrance fees into, the main tourist attractions in the park. The transport issue is important to bear in mind because the park is very large and some of the attractions are a long way from the road and you need to trek to them. The park is also mountainous, with 12 peaks rising to over 1,000 metres above sea level.

Phong Nha Cave

The easiest attraction to visit in Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park is Phong Cave. It’s the most popular attraction in the area for this reason.

To visit Phong Nha Cave you need to take a boat tour. Phong Nha Cave tour boats depart from a pier on the Son River right in the centre of Phong Nha Village. Tours take visitors by boat about 1.5 km in the cave and last around 2 hours. Fees for the tour are fixed and need to be paid in full in advance at the boat pier before the tour departs:

• Entrance Fee: 150,000 VND per person
• Boat Fee: 550,000 VND per boat (up to 12 people)

If you are travelling alone, or with just one other person, finding someone else to share the boat trip cuts down on the cost considerably.

Other Caves in Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park

There are other caves in the park which are easy enough to reach, such as Paradise Cave, Dark Cave, and Tien Son Cave, however, reaching even the entrances to the park’s mega caves involves a long walk and one or more night camping out.

Son Doong Cave, which is the largest cave in the world, takes a day to walk to, and the same for Hang En Cave, which is famous for the impressive large cave chamber at the entrance to the cave system. Visiting either cave is expensive. Tours to Hang En cave are operated by several companies and cost from $600 to $800 USD per person. Only one company operates trips into Son Doong Cave, Oxalis, and 4 day trips cost slightly over $3,000 USD. Visitor numbers to Son Doong Cave are also strictly controlled which means there’s typically a long waiting list and tours need to be booked many months in advance.