Cua Van Floating Village

The most photographed of Ha Long Bay's traditional floating villages, sheltered in a quiet cove on the southwest side of the heritage zone. Brightly painted wooden houses on bamboo rafts ring the bay, anchored to one another and to the limestone cliffs, with fish farms in floating pens between them.

Most overnight cruises visit Cua Van by tender boat or kayak, allowing a slow paddle past the houses, fish farms, and what remains of the floating school and cultural centre. The village now operates partly as a museum of fishing-village life — visitors can enter restored houses and see traditional boats and tools. It is moving in a melancholy way: a community frozen between the life it used to have and the tourism it now serves.

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Until 2014, around 1,600 people lived permanently in the floating fishing villages of Ha Long Bay — families who had never lived on land, whose children went to school in floating classrooms anchored among the karst islands. That year, Vietnamese authorities relocated most residents to the mainland, citing environmental concerns and the difficulty of providing services. A few dozen families remain at Cua Van, and the village has been partly preserved as a cultural site. The empty floating houses bear witness to a way of life that has all but vanished.

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