Starfish Beach and the Cua Can Kayak: Getting the North Right

Rach Vem is a fishing village on Phu Quoc’s north coast, and the shallow water in front of it is full of red starfish. That is the whole attraction, and it is a genuinely lovely thing to stand in. It is also the attraction most easily ruined – by turning up at the wrong hour, and by the way people handle the animals once they are there.

Both problems are fixable, and neither is mentioned in most tour descriptions.

Tide and time of day decide whether they are there

The starfish sit on the sand in very shallow water. At low tide in the morning they are in ankle-deep water and you can see dozens from the shore; at high tide they are further out and deeper, and the beach looks like any other beach. The commonly given window is roughly 7:00 am to 10:00 am, when the low tide and the morning calm coincide.

The season matters as much as the hour. Phu Quoc’s dry months run roughly November to April, when the water on this coast is clear and calm. In the wet half of the year, May to October, the same shallows are stirred up and the visibility that makes this worth photographing is gone.

Which means: if a tour reaches Rach Vem in the middle of the afternoon in September, you are being shown a beach, not a starfish beach. Ask what time the tour arrives there, and where it sits in the itinerary.

Do not lift them out of the water

This is the part worth saying plainly, because it is the difference between a nice hour and a pile of dead animals.

Starfish breathe through their skin, and one lifted out of the water usually dies afterwards – the damage happens long before it looks like anything is wrong. Conservation guidance for this beach is consistently the same: do not touch, do not lift, do not carry one up the sand for a photograph. If you want a picture, take it with the animal where it is, in shallow water.

Sunscreen is the second half of the problem. Rinse off before you wade in, or go in covered rather than freshly oiled.

Guides vary in how firmly they say this. If yours hands you a starfish to hold, that is not local knowledge – it is the thing that has thinned this beach out.

What the standard day tour actually contains

The most-reviewed of the offers in this guide that reach Starfish Beach is the Kayaking with Starfish Beach and Bee Farm Tour, €42.76, 4.5 stars from 321 reviews, eight hours, run by John’s Tours with free pick-up from hotels in Duong Dong and a fee from other areas.

The name lists two of the stops and not the rest. The full day runs: a bee farm, kayaking on the Cua Can River, a drive through the national park, then Rach Vem village and Starfish Beach, with swimming time and lunch. In bad weather, the page says, Rach Vem Beach is swapped for Ganh Dau Beach. Reviewers also mention a silk shop – the standard shopping stop that almost every full-day island tour in Vietnam includes and almost no listing names.

The kayaking is river paddling on flat water past riverside houses, not sea kayaking. If you were hoping to paddle between islands, this is not that, and the honest version of the day is: a varied island loop with a stretch on a river, not a kayaking trip.

The detail that can spoil the day: the bee farm is closed every Wednesday, and the booking page states it is also closed from 1 August to 2 September 2026 for annual maintenance. Both facts are printed on the listing, and neither is in the tour title. A Wednesday booking means paying for a tour whose first stop is shut. Check the day before you check the price.

The other ways to reach the same beach

Rach Vem is roughly the far end of the island from the southern harbours, which is why almost every version of this comes packaged with something else. Our island-hopping category holds the full spread; these are the ones with enough reviews to mean something:

• Starfish Beach Boat Trip & Seafood Lunch – €38.86, 4.9 stars from 26 reviews. Not a guided tour: you make your own way to a family’s floating house at Rach Vem, arriving any time between 8 am and 4 pm, take their boat ten minutes to Starfish Beach and eat a five-dish seafood meal. Hotel pick-up is not part of it, though they can help arrange a taxi; children six and under come free but get no meal.
• Rach Vem Starfish Beach, Cua Can & Grand World – €44.12, 4.1 stars from 49 reviews. Nine hours: a boat from Rach Vem to the starfish at Ham Rong Cape from about 10 am to noon, a seafood lunch at a local restaurant, a bee farm, kayak or basket boat at Cua Can and the early evening at Grand World. Minimum booking two guests; not for pregnant women or babies under 1.
• Jeep Tour: National Park & Rach Vem Village – €88.97, 4.9 stars from 36 reviews, and a private tour rather than a group one. Its described stops are a viewpoint, the national park’s ancient tree and Rach Vem village with seafood at a floating restaurant, chosen and paid for yourself; ask the operator whether Starfish Beach is part of the day. Not for children under 3, pregnant women or people with back problems.

If you want to control the timing, two of these let you: the private jeep, and the floating-house day, where you arrive when you like from 8 am. The whole thing hinges on being at the beach early. On a fixed group itinerary you arrive when the bus arrives.

If the north is the point, not the starfish

Two neighbours are worth knowing about. The Tien Son Dinh jungle trekking adventure is €60.28 with 4.9 stars from 194 reviews – six hours on a trail of more than 6 kilometres climbing to 280 metres, and not suitable for children under 6 or people with a low level of fitness. The national park and jungle category as a whole is small, 20 offers from €22.27, which tells you how much of Phu Quoc’s business is on the water rather than in the forest.

And if the bee farm was the part that appealed, the farms of the north – honey, pepper, pearls – sit in the culture and pepper farms category, 33 offers from €11.62, often as short stops rather than full days.

One practical note for anyone planning this themselves rather than on a tour. Vietnam recognises international driving permits only under the 1968 convention, for scooters as well as cars, so many visitors use a Grab, a taxi or a car with a driver. Rach Vem is a long way north on roads that are not all sealed. If you are two people with no scooter experience, a car with a driver for the morning costs less than you would think and gets you there at seven.