Can Gio travel guide — An ideal destination to spend the weekend near Saigon

Can Gio ecotourism site is 50 km away from Ho Chi Minh City center to the southeast. This is a familiar tourist destination of many people who live in Ho Chi Minh City on the weekends.

Coming to Can Gio, you can stay away from the noise, hustle and bustle in the city and enjoy a great atmosphere in the quiet, pure nature.

How to get to Can Gio

Because the distance from the city center to Can Gio is not too long, you can choose from two popular means of transportation: bus and motorcycle.

By Bus

Start at Ben Thanh market, you catch the bus number 20 and stop at Binh Khanh ferry landing. After crossing the river on the ferry, catch the bus number 90 to go straight to the sea. If you have any place you want to visit during taking this bus, you need to ask for permission to get off the bus because buses in Can Gio don’t have any bus stops.

Alternatively, you can catch the bus number 75 departing from 23/9 park and stop at Can Thanh bus station (Can Gio). This bus also passes some familiar tourist spots in Can Gio.

By Motorcycle

Because it’s hard to control schedule when using bus, many people choose motorcycle to travel to Can Gio.

From Ho Chi Minh City center, you ride to Tan Thuan bridge (district 7), find and turn into Nguyen Van Linh street then Huynh Tan Phat street then go straight, the end of the road is Binh Khanh ferry landing. You need to buy ticket to use ferry service to get to Can Gio. From there, you will see a road that goes straight from Can Gio to Can Thanh commune center. On this road, you can stop to visit Can Gio beach, Vam Sat or monkey island,… But to be more assured, you should see direction boards to avoid getting lost.

Though the roads to Can Gio are quite nice, there are still some bumpy, ugly parts so you need to prepare necessary tools for motorcycle repair in case the motorcycle breaks down on the way because there are few motorcycle repair shops along the roads. You have to comply with traffic rules to avoid troubles because those roads are so quiet that traffic police often monitor vehicles’ speed.

Apart from these two means of transportation, you also can use boat, canoe or motorboat.

Tourist Attractions in Can Gio

Explore Vam Sat Mangrove Forest

Vam Sat mangrove forest is listed in the World Network of Biosphere Reserves with the abundant fauna and flora. You can explore the famous attractions such as bird yard, Bat Pond (Dam Doi), crocodile farm,… to participate in interesting activities: fishing, crab fishing, watch the birds, crocodile fishing, boating, using nets to catch fish,…

If you want to relax amongst quiet and untouched forests, you can go canoeing through green and cool canals covered by rows of mangrove along.

Playing on Can Gio Beach

Not noisy, crowded as Vung Tau beach, Can Gio beach (30/4 sea) is still being considered a familiar place for swimming of many tourists with the nice, gentle beach. You can comfortably enjoy the fun in the water with your friends, relatives in a free and quiet atmosphere.

Although services here are quite quiet, this place becomes an ideal destination for leisure travel, keeps you away from the noisy, busy crowds at popular tourist sites.

Visit Monkey Island

Monkey island is one of attractive spots for travelers when coming to Can Gio. The number of monkeys here can be up to more 1,000 with many different species but they all are very bold and smart. You can come close to shake hand or feed them and take unique pictures but you must be careful to protect your personal items because there are some mischievous monkeys jerking things from visitors.

Experience Hazardous Activity: Crocodile Fishing

At Vam Sat, there are some large crocodile farms to enable tourists to visit and learn about the hunting behavior of crocodile and especially challenge themselves with the hazardous crocodile fishing.

This activity seems dangerous but actually it is very safe. You will be taken to the lake where there are hungry crocodiles and sit on a boat surrounded with anti B40 fence. Now tourists just need to sit inside the boat, toss out the bait and wait for a crocodile to bite it to enjoy the feeling of dragging the prey.

Enjoy Delicious Cheap Seafood Specialties

Can Gio has many kinds of seafood that tourists when coming here can’t ignore, shrimp is chosen by many people. There is full of shrimp as black tiger shrimp (tom su), roe shrimp (tom gach son), cat tiger shrimp (tom sat),… but the best one is still roe shrimp (tom gach son) which usually appears around March – April in lunar calendar and you can steam, grill it as you want.

Besides, there are many familiar types of snail, crab. Coming here, you definitely have to try cum crab (cua cum) – a type of crab lives mostly in mangrove forest and has very delicious meat.

Whichever kinds of seafood you choose to try in Can Gio, they always bring very special tastiness to you. However, you should also bargain over the price and carefully consider before buying to avoid buying poor quality seafood and to avoid buying at much higher price.

Not much money and time to get to Can Gio, you still have a very interesting trip, so will you choose Can Gio for this weekend?

You also see more Ho Chi Minh City travel guide at here.