Monkey Island is a paradise island located in Lan Ha Bay, just off Cat Ba Island. It is a limestone island formed in a similar way to the whole geography of the area and it has the most incredible beach with crystalline waters overseeing the bay. Towering blocks of limestone with forests are scattered around in the emerald waters in the distance. Does it sound like heaven?
Yes, because it could be, there is even a resort in this island for peace and tranquillity, there are a few monkeys around who will steal your things (we saw them steal a man’s wallet and then proceeded to empty its contents one by one) but the beach is gorgeous and peaceful.
However, we went to the island as part of a tour and had what was probably one of the scariest things we have done on our trip to Vietnam.
We were not sure what to expect in Monkey Island when we went there, to be completely honest. We arrived on the boat that was taking us around the tour. There were more tourist boats there too, there was a gorgeous white sand beach and (yes, monkeys), we sat down thinking the plan was to chill by the beach for a bit but our guide was ushering us to follow him up this jungle trail that started near the beach
He then started to give us rock climbing 101 lessons such as “make sure to keep three points in contact at all times”, bear in mind there were some people in our group wearing flip flops or open toed shoes (although he had warned us not to wear them, we never expected the reason).
When we asked him if the climb was hard he said no, so we carried on. The trail started easy, just hiking up some paths within the jungle, but as we got closer to the top we started to get harder.
Horizontal trails became more vertical where we had to hang onto rocks to jump up. It didn’t help that there were people behind waiting to get through. It was a bit stressful because it kind of felt like we were in a queue from where we couldn’t get off, but the path was getting harder, and some people were more edgy as things got tougher (including myself).
We then started having to jump over limestone cliff edges (although not too widely separated) they were quite high. Someone who came with us lost her flip flop in one of those and someone else from another group cut themselves on the sharp rocks.
We then approached this scary huge ledge, the mechanism to get to the other side was by grabbing onto a dead tree branch (yes, everyone had to, all the tourists waiting and us, every single one) and it was the only way up or down.
I mean, the view was amazing but I wish they would have warned us because we were so ill prepared, physically and mentally!
Some questions remain here, as we went back in 2019…
Are tourists still allowed to visit Monkey Island? It did not seem a very sustainable way to visit this place, it was so crowded.
Should tours be even taking tourists on these dangerous hikes when they are clearly not prepared? Some of the tourists weren’t even accompanied, so I do hope there haven’t been any accidents related.
And most importantly… is that tree branch still there, serving newbie climbers on their journey atop Monkey Island?
If you join one of these tours and are not too keen on risking your life, footwear or just enjoy relaxation, maybe choose to stay back at the beach 🙂
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