Cù Lao Chàm and the Cù Lao Chàm – Hội An biosphere reserve: what is what

Two things with one name

Cù Lao Chàm is a cluster of small islands off the coast of Hội An; the Cù Lao Chàm – Hội An World Biosphere Reserve is a UNESCO designation over a much larger area that includes those islands and the whole of Hội An's mainland. Hội An's heritage centre describes the islands as a group 15 km from the Hội An coast, with Hòn Lao the largest and the only one where people live.[1] Đà Nẵng's tourism promotion centre describes the reserve as 33,737 hectares, made up of the entire mainland of Hội An and the marine zone of the Cù Lao Chàm Marine Protected Area.[5]

The difference matters for a visitor. Going to the islands is a boat trip. "Visiting the biosphere reserve" could mean the islands, the nipa-palm forest at the mouth of the Thu Bồn, the craft villages or the old town itself, all of which the government's news site lists as part of it.[7] XTOUR treats the islands as a trip from the Hội An base, not as a part of the town, and keeps the designation separate from the places it covers.

How the reserve is laid out

The government's news site says the reserve was recognised by the International Coordinating Council of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme on 26 May 2009.[7] Đà Nẵng's tourism portal adds that the decision was taken at Jeju, South Korea, and sets out three zones.[5]

• The core area, 11,560 hectares, is all the islets and the functional zones of the Cù Lao Chàm Marine Protected Area.[5]
• The buffer zone, 20,660 hectares, is the sea around the core plus Hội An's rivers, canals, lakes, wetlands and beaches.[5]
• The transition zone, 1,517 hectares, is the rest of Hội An, including the ancient town and the craft villages.[5]

The national nature-conservation portal gives a different total, 33,146 hectares, with a population of 83,792.[6] XTOUR does not know which figure is current or whether the boundary has changed; both pages are official, and the difference is stated here rather than resolved.

Seven islands or eight

The heritage centre's two websites do not agree on what the island group is. Its older site, in a page dated 2012, says seven islands: Hòn Lao, Hòn Dài, Hòn Mồ, Hòn Tai, Hòn Nồm, Hòn Lá and Hòn Khô.[1] Its current tourism site, in a 2022 page, says eight: Hòn Lao, Hòn Dài, Hòn Mồ, Hòn Khô mẹ, Hòn Khô con, Hòn Lá, Hòn Tai and Hòn Ông.[2] The national nature-conservation portal also says eight.[6] XTOUR's reading is that the eight-island list splits Hòn Khô into two and names Hòn Ông where the older list has Hòn Nồm, but the pages do not explain the change.

The 2022 page gives the group an area of about 15 km² and more than 2,900 residents, with 1,549 hectares of natural forest and 6,716 hectares of water.[2] The centre's ecosystem page describes tropical broadleaf forest mainly between 50 m and 500 m above sea level and names the long-tailed macaque and the swiftlet as Red Book species. It counts 947 marine species recorded since 1994 and places the richest coral north of Hòn Khô, Hòn Lá and Hòn Tai and north-west of Hòn Mồ.[10]

What is on Hòn Lao

The heritage interest is concentrated on Hòn Lao. The centre counts 25 religious relics from the 18th to the early 20th century along the island's west side, at Bãi Làng and Bãi Hương.[1] Its 2022 page names some of them, the Đại Càn communal house, the shrine to the founder of the swiftlet-nest craft, the Ông Ngư whale tomb, the Xóm Cấm well and the Hải Tạng pagoda, but dates the island's religious relics mostly to the 17th and 18th centuries, so the centre's two pages do not agree on their age either.[2]

Two archaeological sites on the island are national relics, ranked on 13 December 2006 by a decision of the Ministry of Culture and Information, according to the centre. Bãi Ông is a settlement and burial site of people who lived there more than 3,000 years ago. Bãi Làng yielded Champa, Chinese and Middle Eastern ceramics and glass, which the centre reads as a stopping place for international ships in the 7th to 10th centuries.[8] Đà Nẵng's tourism portal lists these two with five historical sites and Hải Tạng pagoda as the island's national relics.[5]

The sea floor holds a third story. The centre describes a ship built in Thailand in the first half of the 15th century and found 15 km north of Cù Lao Chàm, laden with ceramics from Chu Đậu and Mỹ Xá; excavations from 1996 to 2000 recovered 240,000 objects.[8] Hội An's museum system says its store holds nearly 5,000 of those ceramics.[12] The Hội An museums guide covers what is on show in town.

Island festivals

The centre describes two community rites on the islands. The ceremony for the founders of the swiftlet-nest craft runs over the evening of the 9th and the morning of the 10th of the third lunar month, with a boat procession past the shrines from Bãi Hương to Bãi Làng and Bãi Ông. The cầu ngư festival at the Ông Ngư tomb, the fishermen's rite for the whale god, is held on the 3rd and 4th of the fourth lunar month, according to Báo Văn Hóa; the newspaper reported that the 2026 festival ran on 19 and 20 May.[11][9] Those 2026 dates are past; XTOUR has not seen a notice for 2027.

Getting there, fees and rules, as official pages state them

The heritage centre says the islands lie about 15 km by sea from Cửa Đại beach.[4] That is a distance, not a boat route or a crossing time, and XTOUR has none to give. Đà Nẵng's tourism portal says visitors cross by high-speed canoe or wooden boat from Cửa Đại port or other docks.[5]

The same portal, in a page dated 18 August 2025, says visitors pay a Cù Lao Chàm entrance fee and an environmental protection and security fee on top of the boat fare.[5] XTOUR does not republish the amounts, because a 2025 page is not a current price. The portal also says that from September to February, the rainy and stormy season in central Vietnam, boats may not run consistently, though the islands stay open.[5] That is the portal's statement, not a timetable.

The portal lists rules for visitors: no plastic bags, life jackets when swimming, snorkelling and on boats, no hunting, no stepping on or taking coral or marine life in strictly protected areas, only eco-certified stone crabs to eat, and suitable dress at religious sites.[5] The heritage centre's 2022 page says islanders have kept to a city ban on plastic bags since mid-2009.[2]

Which administrative unit

The centre's 2022 pages and its current homepage teaser place Cù Lao Chàm in Tân Hiệp commune, Hội An city, Quảng Nam province.[4][3][2] That wording predates the 2025 reorganisation. Báo Văn Hóa, reporting in May 2026, gives "xã Tân Hiệp, TP. Đà Nẵng".[11] XTOUR has not read a government resolution naming the unit and states only what these pages say; the 2025 province mergers article covers the wider change.

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR does not know current boat timetables, crossing times, ticket prices, whether overnight stays are allowed or available, accessibility of the landings, or which of the two island counts and two reserve areas is current. The centre's 2022 page names a Cù Lao Chàm tourism management board at Bãi Ông village, Tân Hiệp commune, as the contact.[2] For the base town, see the Hội An destination page; for choosing between Hội An and Đà Nẵng, the base guide.