Visit Ca Mau – Vietnam’s southernmost province

Ca Mau is the only place on the mainland where you can watch the sunrise on the East Coast, and dive in the West Sea. Ca Mau 350km from Ho Chi Minh City along Highway 1 has many Southwestern specialties.

A place where people and nature coexist in harmony, Ca Mau is dotted with bird parks, swamplands, channels and forests. Among this natural beauty, U Minh National Park, lying right beside the Gulf of Thailand, is the habitat of many unique animals and plants. In terms of cultural heritage, the most visited destinations are Tan Hung Temple and Quan Am Pagoda.

How to get there

There are many coach firms for your choice, with fares for beds from Saigon to Ca Mau from VND170,000 to VND220,000/person.

There are three roads for motorcycles:

– Saigon – Tan An – Trung Luong – Can Tho – Bac Lieu – Ca Mau

– Saigon – Trung Luong – Vinh Long – Bac Lieu – Soc Trang – Ca Mau

– Saigon – Tan An- Ben Tre – Tra Vinh – Chau Doc – Ca Mau

Hotels

There are many hotels and motels in Ca Mau city with room rates ranging from VND200,000 to VND500,000 per room.

Ca Mau Cape

The Cape of Ca Mau belongs to Ngoc Hien District in Ca Mau Province. It is located only 118km away from the center of Ca Mau City. This is a unique spot not only because of its southernmost location, but also because it is the only place in Vietnam where one can see the sun rising in the East and setting in the West.

The cape was discovered at the end of the 17th century. As it is the residential area of three ethnic groups: Kinh, Hoa, and Khmer, it is the place where many aspects of the three cultures interact and converge, reflecting in many unique traditions and customs.

From the Cape of Ca Mau, one can see the Hon Khoai Archipelago which is 20km away from mainland. This is a huge cluster of beautiful islands such as Hon Tuong, Hon Sao, Hon Kho, Hon Lon, Hon Doi Moi, etc., among which the Hon Khoai Island is the biggest and highest with a width of 4km2 and a height of 318m.

To get to the Ca Mau Cape, from Ca Mau City center, you can take the bus to Nam Can town, which takes about 1 hour. You should come to the town in the afternoon and rent a room to stay. The day after, you can rent a boat to go to the Ca Mau Cape, at the price of VND1.2 to VND2 million for a group of 8 to 10 people.

Hon Khoai Island

This is a rock island on which the hills and the forest still remain untouched with many specious types of wood, animal, and plants, as well as a mesmerizing artless wilderness.

Setting foot on Hon Khoai Island enables all tourists to enjoy the poetically beautiful seashores that are full of white egg-shaped cobbles. Tourists can also challenge their bravery by climbing up the mountains or discovering the tropical jungle. However, no matter what they do, the rare and priceless scenery of primitive forest with more than 1,000 types of plants and hundreds species of wild animals will surely leave them speechless from time to time.

Nowadays, on the highest peak of Hon Khoai Island still stands a beautiful lighthouse built by the French at the end of the 19th century. This is the place where a revered teacher named Pham Ngoc Hien led a group of prisoners to success over the French leader of the island, which resulted in their ownership of the lighthouse. This is a wondrous exploit that always appears in local tales today. From this lighthouse, visitors can use telescopes to look closely at one of the five surrounding islands called Hon DoiMoi, which resembles a tortoise swimming in the middle of the ocean. However, they can also use the telescopes to have a look at the Cape of Ca Mau, to know at least once in their life known how beautiful the cape is from afar. Without coming to Hon Khoai, such opportunity would be nearly impossible!

U Minh forest

U Minh is a vast land with a tangled system of channels. Its area is approximately 2,000 km2. The nature here is wild and grandiose. Just the name “U Minh” refers to something immense, very far, very deep.

The cajuput forest is a kind of homogeneous forest with trees from 10 to 20m tall. From a distance, U Minh is covered with the green of cajuput leaves and the blue of the sky.

Cajuput forest is different from mangrove forests in structure. The background of the mangrove forest is the vacant marsh because plants cannot grow here. On the contrary, in cajuput forest, many kinds of plants can grow. The most frequent plants are Mop (Móp) plant and Choai (Choại) plant.

Every year, cajuput forest supplies hundreds of tons of Choai strings, which is a kind of creeper soaking in water, has durability and resistance like rattan. People use Choai strings to twist fish traps very well or use it to make arts and crafts very beautiful and firm. In cajuput forest, there is Mop plant, which is also called Cork. The root of a Mop plant is very slight and spongy, so it can be used to make lifebelts, fishing floats, and caps.

In summer, cajuput forest blooms, attracting honey-bees from other places to come to suck nectar. U Minh people have the experience in preparing a place for bees to make them nest. Each nest can produce liters of honey in a flower season and hundreds of liters of good honey after the season of cajuput flower can be taken by individuals. The honey of U Minh has a special flavor of cajuput flower. This kind of honey has a yellow color and transparent, its color is constant and unchanged as if it been stored for many years. Therefore, every year, U Minh cajuput forest supplies over 50 tons of honey.

U Minh forest is also a “sea of fish”. Fish lives in reservoirs, channels. In flooding season, fish swims following water to enter the forest for parturition. When the water level drops, the U Minh forest is also famous as a large yard of birds. You can hear birds’ voices fluttering in vaults of green leaves. In afternoons, flocks of birds fly in the sky. Many kinds of storks, dien dien (điên điển), cong coc (cồng cộc), teals, frogs, ravens, sea eagles, etc. gather into groups here for laying eggs, and giving birth. Poisonous snakes live here, so many people specialize in catching snakes and are expert on compounding medicine treating injuries because of being bit by poisonous snakes.

Bird gardens

Bird gardens are among the places that tourists should not miss when coming to Ca Mau. The most famous bird gardens are 19/5, Tu Na, Cha La, Dam Doi, and Tan Tien.

Downtown Ca Mau

Tourists can visit the memorial site of President Ho Chi Minh, Khmer temple Monivongsa Borapham, stroll around the center when the streetlights are on, and wander in the night market and enjoy local specialties like grilled snakehead fish and salted turtle.

Visit Ca Mau – Vietnam’s southernmost province

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