Cham Island Vietnam: Decent, but is it worth the trip?

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Cham Island is located just off the coast of Da Nang and Hoi An in the popular central part of the country. While the place is lovely, it is a bit questionable about whether or not the trip is actually worth it since the water is quite similar to on the mainland, and it does take quite a lot of time and effort to get there.

Your journey will begin at the pier in Hoi An and the departure time happens every morning. Normally there are several times of day that the boat will travel to the island, but due to the near non-existent tourism during the Covid times, there was only one journey there and one back each day. This area is quite popular as a day trip offered from the mainland (when tourism exists, which it doesn't right now) and if I had that as an option knowing what I know now, I likely would prefer to do that.

Seaview accommodation can be found for less than $20 at the moment and I was actually a little disappointed to see that most of the places were actually giant cement buildings rather than bungalow operations on the beach. This massive structures can certainly accommodate more people and I think that was the idea.

The sea here is clear and calm which is a pretty big difference to the coasts of Hoi An and especially Da Nang, where the waves can make some of the beaches difficult to swim in, or even potentially dangerous. So for someone that desires a more relaxed beach experience, this might be a good choice.

No matter where you decide to stay, you will not be far from the beach areas where lounge chairs are for rent (or provided for free by certain hotels) and inexpensive beers and various drinks are available from the staff. PRO TIP: If you go to the places where you actually have to pay to rent the chairs the drinks are less than half the cost, so if you know you are going to drink some beers, it is actually a lot less expensive to pay for the chairs then to use the free ones the hotel provides (which sell beers at hotel prices.)

We basically had the entire place to ourselves, which would appeal to the right type of person. We are a social bunch so we actually got quite bored but a family might prefer this type of situation.

Walk in basically any direction (both of them) and you will find loads of cheap-ish seafood restaurants that serve the fresh catch in a "family style" way where everyone shares large portions of prawns, fish, crab, and even lobsters if you are willing to pay the price for it (it isn't cheap for the lobster.)

If you look closely in that above picture you can actually see the lights from the mainland in the distance. The island is only around 8 km from the mainland.

The island is completely closed from November to February because monsoon season makes the waves from the shore too dangerous for the ferries to travel to and from the island.

Once things return to "normal" as far as tourism is concerned we can all expect the prices on this island to increase dramatically. We felt the island was just "OK" and are unlikely to return to it (all of us either live here in DaNang or are trapped here due to the lack of international travel.) If there had been tourist prices for everything, I think we would have actually been quite upset with the trip.

For us, we felt that the island was just a bit too boring for us to really recommend it. You are subjected to the very small number of shops and restaurants that are in the immediate tourist areas and once you've done them, there really isn't anything else to do. This may appeal to people that just want to "get away from it all" but for us, it started to feel as though we were trapped and all of us were actually quite excited to get back to the mainland.

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