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The Binh Chau – Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve did not become a sanctuary by accident; its preservation is the result of decades of deliberate legal protection. On August 9, 1986, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers signed Decision 194/CT, formally recognising Binh Chau – Phuoc Buu as a national nature reserve. Eight years before that, in 1978, the area had already been demarcated as a “protected forest” meaning people understood early on that this was something worth keeping at any cost. Nearly four decades after that signature, the forest stretching across more than 11,000 hectares and five communes of Xuyen Moc District is still standing and still the only remaining coastal primary forest in Vietnam that is relatively intact. Not “one of the few.” The only one.
Explore what Binh Chau – Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve has to offer with ExoTrails. Full details and location on the app: link.exotrails.com/7yYtad54IWb
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A Forest Science Is Still Busy Discovering
Among the 750 plant species across 123 families recorded here, there is one name that exists nowhere else on Earth: Dầu cát (scientific name Dipterocarpus costatus). This is the reserve’s absolute endemic species not “rarely found elsewhere,” but found exclusively within this forest. Alongside it, the reserve shelters a long list of timber species listed in Vietnam’s Red Book: Bà Rịa rosewood, red ironwood, honey ironwood, padauk, and Bình linh nghệ names well-known to illegal loggers, but equally well-known to the rangers here.
The most remarkable resident, though, isn’t a tree. Leiolepis ngovantri known in Vietnamese as the “Ngô Văn Trí parthenogenetic sand lizard” is a reptile that exists in exactly one place on the planet: the coastal sand flats and melaleuca forest of the Binh Chau – Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve. What makes it stranger than merely being rare: the entire population consists only of females. There are no males. They reproduce through parthenogenesis self-cloning, without mating. It is among the rarest reproductive phenomena recorded in vertebrates, and it is happening right beneath the sand of a forest less than three hours from Ho Chi Minh City.
70 Thermal Vents in a Seven-Hectare Melaleuca Forest
The Binh Chau Hot Springs are not a single spring. They are more than 70 open-air geothermal vents scattered across roughly seven hectares of old-growth melaleuca forest within the Binh Chau – Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve. Temperatures range from 37°C at the shallower edges warm enough to soak your feet to 82°C at the central pool, where the water is perpetually bubbling and steaming like a natural pressure cooker. At the hottest point, visitors boil eggs directly in the water, no stove required. That’s not a tourist gimmick. That’s just the physics of the ground here.
What sets Binh Chau apart from every spa or hot spring resort designed primarily for Instagram is the setting: steam rising through old melaleuca canopy, morning light filtering through the leaves, and no one else’s Bluetooth speaker. Get there before 8 a.m. to feel the difference.
What’s on ExoTrails at Binh Chau – Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve
If you’d rather arrive with a plan than wing it, ExoTrails has three experiences documented in detail right inside this reserve.
Trekking Phuoc Buu Jungle – Tam Bo Mount
Detailed information and navigate the Trekking Phuoc Buu Jungle – Tam Bo Mount on ExoTrails: link.exotrails.com/FWv5Y0RTt0b
This is a one-way trail covering 9.88 km within the Binh Chau – Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve. It begins at the reserve entrance, cuts through dense natural forest under a high dipterocarp canopy, climbs to the Tam Bo summit where the surface turns to bare rock and the view opens up then drops straight down to Ho Coc beach. Estimated completion time is 4 to 6 hours depending on pace. It’s the kind of route where the finish looks nothing like the start: you walk in through forest and step out onto the sea. That contrast is the point. Entry to the reserve requires prior registration and approval from the management board; admission is approximately 20,000–30,000 VND per person. Dense vegetation limits visibility and the longer branch trails are easy to stray from keep the route open on the app. Dry season, December through April, gives the most stable conditions underfoot.
Camping Spot at Ho Coc Beach
Detailed information and navigate to the Camping Spot at Ho Coc Beach on ExoTrails: link.exotrails.com/P98q89lEIWb
Located right on the edge of the Binh Chau – Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve, Ho Coc Beach is one of the few beach camping spots within easy reach of Saigon that still feels genuinely undeveloped: white sand, steady waves, no music, no rentals, and a night sky dark enough to actually see stars. Entry is free and you can stay as long as you like, but bring everything tent, water, food, and if the group is up for it, a portable grill. An evening of beachside barbecue with the sound of the ocean instead of a playlist is the kind of thing no resort can replicate. Inconvenient in the best possible way.
Binh Chau Beach
Detailed information about Binh Chau Beach on ExoTrails: link.exotrails.com/ezTqIEd3dZb
Where Ho Coc has started to attract wider attention, Binh Chau beach shielded by its proximity to the Binh Chau – Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve has held onto the quiet that comes with being genuinely far from the city. Fine white sand broken up by natural rock outcrops, open space, no beach bars, no sound systems. It’s built for self-directed time walking the shoreline, watching the sun go down or come up, or pitching a tent for the night. Late afternoon here, when the light drops low and the wind shifts, is the kind of hour that brings people back. Pair it with the Tam Bo trek for a complete day: forest in the morning, coast in the evening.
Into the Forest — Literally
The Binh Chau – Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve’s terrain falls into four distinct types, and the transitions between them are half the experience: most of the land sits at just 3 to 5 metres above sea level, giving way to three low hill clusters the highest being Hồng Nhung in the north at 118 metres then coastal sand dunes, and finally the wetlands along the lake edges. Walking from towering dipterocarp forest into flooded melaleuca woodland, out across white sand dunes and down to the sea, can all be done in a single day. By the time you finish, you’ll feel like you’ve moved through three entirely different ecosystems because you have.
When you buy your entry ticket at the gate, the management office provides a printed map with marked trails and points of interest. Mobile signal is unreliable in much of the Binh Chau – Phuoc Buu Nature Reserve that’s a practical note, not a warning. Download the ExoTrails app before you go: the offline maps and safe navigation features mean the route stays accessible whether or not your signal does.
