Ti Top Island

In just over a day, a man went around the Earth 17 times. On August 6, 1961, the spacecraft Vostok 2 lifted off, carrying the Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov. He was not yet 26 years old.

Just over a day is the time from breakfast one morning to breakfast the next, and a little more. In that time, a child would go to school, eat lunch, play, eat dinner, sleep a long sleep and wake up again. But Titov flew around the whole planet, once, twice, then ten times, then 17, over ocean after ocean and continent after continent.

He was the second human being ever to orbit the Earth, only a few months after Yuri Gagarin. But his flight had firsts of its own. Titov was the first person to sleep in orbit, while his spacecraft went on quietly circling the Earth. And he was the first person to take photographs of the Earth from space.

Less than six months after the flight, in January 1962, Titov came to visit Vietnam. A presidential order signed on January 20 gave him the title Hero of Labor of Vietnam.

Two days later, Ha Long Bay welcomed the visitor from space. The day was bitterly cold. A navy ship named Hải Lâm cut through the water between limestone mountains that rose straight up from the bay. At noon, President Hồ Chí Minh took Titov to a small island and gave it the name Ti Tốp, as a keepsake of the visit to Ha Long Bay.

Ti Tốp is simply the name Titov, said the way Vietnamese people say it. Before that day, the navy knew the island only by a number: 48. When he heard that the island would carry his name, the cosmonaut said it was a great honor.

In truth, island number 48 had other names before. People once called it Hồng Thập Tự, which means the Red Cross, or Nghĩa Địa, which means the cemetery. On a map of Ha Long Bay drawn by the French in the late 19th century, it bore a name that sounds far gentler: Cát Nàng. And from that winter noon onward, the island has carried the name people still use today.

Ti Tốp is tiny. The whole island covers only about 3.7 hectares. It is one of the smallest islands in Ha Long Bay. Among the thousands of limestone peaks and islets rising from the water, it is little more than a dot. A man who had circled the Earth 17 times now had his name tied to a scrap of land this small.

But that small scrap of land is unusually beautiful. Seen from above, the island has a sheer cliff on one side and a gentle slope down to the sea on the other. Wrapped around its foot is a long beach, curved like a crescent moon. That is why many visitors know this place by a poetic name: Bãi Vầng Trăng, the Moon Beach.

The sand here is white. The water stays clear all year, sometimes glowing emerald green, so clear that the pebbles on the bottom show through. The tide comes in and goes out, in and out, quietly washing the sand clean every day.

And here is something few people expect. Ha Long Bay has hundreds of lovely natural beaches. Yet Ti Tốp is the only beach in the whole bay licensed to receive swimmers.

There is a reason for this. To be licensed, a beach had to have freshwater showers, toilets and a way of dealing with garbage. Building those things on small islands could easily spoil the beauty of the bay. The beach at Soi Sim also used to welcome visitors, but it closed in 2019. Since then, across the whole wide bay, only Ti Tốp remains.

In 2024, this small beach was also the only one from Vietnam on a list of the 100 most incredible beaches in the world, chosen by a well-known publisher of travel guides.

From the sand, a stairway climbs to the top of the island. The path is steep, step after step, rough and uneven, and before long the climber is short of breath. But at the top, the bay opens out on every side. The sea stretches far away. The mountains stand tall and grand. And right below lies the long strip of white sand, curved like a sliver of moon laid at the water's edge.

On the island, Titov stays on in another way. A statue of the cosmonaut stands here, carved from Thanh Hóa bluestone in two blocks fitted together. It is nearly 6 meters tall and weighs more than 26 tons. It was unveiled on September 14, 2015, just three days after the 80th anniversary of his birth.

The design came from the sculptor Lâm Quang Nới of Ho Chi Minh City. An art council chose it from among the sketches of many sculptors. Beside the statue stands a stone stele. Its front face is carved in three languages: Vietnamese, Russian and English.

Yet perhaps the most moving words were written by Titov himself. On June 27, 1997, he came back to the island that bears his name. It was 35 years after his first visit.

In the visitors' book of the Ha Long Bay Management Board, he wrote: "I thank fate for giving me the chance to return to this small island." Three years later, in 2000, Gherman Titov died.

Here was a man who had traveled 17 times around the Earth. Yet what he wanted to give thanks for, after all those years, was the chance to set foot once more on a patch of land smaller than 4 hectares.

Today, every day, the tide still comes in and goes out, wiping away the footprints on the crescent of sand. The little island still rests among thousands of stone peaks, carrying the name of a man who flew 17 times around the Earth, and still found his way back.