Hải Phòng tide times

Hải Phòng is Vietnam's largest northern port and the country's third-largest city, positioned at the mouth of the Cấm River where it meets the tidal system feeding into the Gulf of Tonkin. The port handles the bulk of containerised cargo serving Hanoi and the Red River Delta industrial zone — a throughput of over 100 million tonnes annually. Tidal conditions at Hải Phòng are diurnal: one high and one low per day, mean range approximately 3.2 m, driven by the same Gulf of Tonkin resonance that governs Hạ Long Bay 60 km to the northeast.

For a major port operating on a diurnal tide, timing is everything. Vessels with deep drafts must schedule their arrivals and departures around the single daily high water; there is no second tidal window later in the day. The port channel from the outer anchorage into the main berths is maintained at approximately 7.5 m below mean low water; on spring tides, a fully laden bulk carrier may have less than 2 m of under-keel clearance at low water. The port authority publishes official tide times in advance, and vessels receive tide windows in their berthing assignment.

The urban core of Hải Phòng sits on a series of islands and peninsulas between the Cấm River and its distributaries. The French colonial architecture in the city centre — built between the 1880s and 1930s — is the most extensive surviving example in northern Vietnam: tree-lined boulevards, yellow-rendered administrative buildings, and the Hải Phòng Opera House (1912), a smaller echo of the Hanoi Opera House. The French built Hải Phòng as the commercial port for Hanoi and invested accordingly in its infrastructure.

Đồ Sơn Peninsula, 20 km southeast of the city centre, is the beach resort of Hải Phòng — a narrow limestone peninsula extending into the Gulf of Tonkin with a series of beaches on its seaward face. The tidal flat at Đồ Sơn is wide and exposed: at low water, mud and sand extend 300 to 500 m from the beach face, and the traditional seafood restaurants on stilts above the flat become accessible by walking across it. These stilt restaurants — serving crab, shrimp, and clams harvested from the adjacent flat — are timed to the low-water window; at high water, the access path is submerged and the restaurants are surrounded by water. The diurnal tidal range at Đồ Sơn is approximately 3.0 m.

The Cát Bà Archipelago, 30 km east of Hải Phòng by fast ferry, is a UNESCO-recognised part of the Hạ Long Bay World Heritage extension. Cát Bà Island has a national park covering the island interior and surrounding sea, with limestone karst coast, tidal mangrove forest in the sheltered bays, and the langur species (Trachypithecus poliocephalus — Cat Ba langur) found nowhere else on earth. Cát Bà town on the southern coast has accommodation, dive operators, and kayak hire.

Tide predictions on this page come from Open-Meteo Marine, a global ocean model. Accuracy is typically within plus or minus 45 minutes on timing and 0.2 to 0.3 metres on height — model-derived, not a port gauge. For port operations, vessel scheduling, and maritime safety, official tide tables are published by NAVIC (Vietnam Register) and the General Department of Seas and Islands (GOSI); the Hải Phòng Port Authority also publishes real-time gauge data.