Bai Chay

Bãi Cháy is a tourist area on the shore of Ha Long Bay, in Quảng Ninh province. Before anything is said about the beach itself, there is the story of its name.

The name carries two legends, and both are about fire. The first belongs to the time of the Trần dynasty, which ruled Vietnam from 1225 to 1400. The old people told how the soldiers and villagers of the Trần, led by Trần Khánh Dư, burned a whole fleet of enemy supply boats. The enemy was the Yuan, the Mongol dynasty then ruling China. The flames were blown ashore on the western side of Cửa Lục and glowed red across a whole stretch of land. That stretch of land took the name Bãi Cháy.

The second legend is plainer. In the old days, fishermen often burned casuarina leaves around their boats to kill the barnacles clinging to the wood. Seen from the Hòn Gai side, the fire seemed to blaze along a whole strip of shore, so people called the place Bãi Cháy. Both are folk tales, and both are the way people of the past explained this stretch of sea and held it in memory, as people of the past saw it.

Now look at what lies ahead. A band of yellow sand runs for more than 500 meters and is about 100 meters wide, hugging the calm water of the bay. It is an artificial beach, shaped by human hands, not a wild beach like those on Cô Tô or Quan Lạn. That is exactly why it has a character of its own: a space for swimming in the sea, right beside the busy tourist center of Ha Long.

What is interesting about Bãi Cháy today is how it has grown into one unbroken tourist stretch along the shore. In 2019, Quảng Ninh province opened a coastal road 4.3 kilometers long, running along the edge of the sea. It joins the beach to the rest of the waterfront, so that the whole shore reads as a single, connected piece of the city.

Along just a short part of that road, three layers of Ha Long show at once. There is the beach beneath the feet, the busy tourist town alongside, and far off the gateway to a world natural heritage site.

In the afternoon, the walk along the sand is unhurried. Wind from the bay blows in cool, the water shines with the last light of the day, and on the horizon the gray stone islands of Ha Long rise faintly, hazy in the distance. To stand at Bãi Cháy is to stand at the threshold of the bay, one morning away from the boats that carry people out to the wonder beyond.