Where Kong: Skull Island was filmed in Vietnam

The short answer

Kong: Skull Island shot its Vietnam scenes in three regions in early 2016: the Tu Lan cave system and Tan Hoa village in Quang Binh, the Trang An and Van Long area in Ninh Binh, and the islands of Ha Long Bay in Quang Ninh. Principal photography ran from October 2015 to March 2016, and the crew of around 120 spent roughly five weeks moving between those provinces. If you only do one of them, make it Tu Lan. That is where the real 'lost world' jungle came from, and it is the only location you can walk into as a proper adventure rather than a sightseeing boat ride.

The version near Phong Nha is run by Oxalis out of Tan Hoa as a 1 to 4 day trip. The two day tour is around $292 (7,700,000 VND, prices checked June 2026). The Ninh Binh and Ha Long stand-ins are easy half-day add-ons if your route through Vietnam passes them anyway.

Why the director picked Vietnam

Jordan Vogt-Roberts scouted everywhere from Iceland to Cambodia before he settled on Vietnam, and the karst country in the centre and north gave him a Skull Island that did not need much help from a computer. The pitch was simple: real jungle, real limestone towers, real rivers, all in frame at once. It worked well enough that the Vietnamese government named him an official tourism ambassador in 2017, a post he held until 2020 and the first time a foreign director had taken it. So the film is tangled up with how Vietnam markets itself, which is part of why every other agency still slaps 'Kong' on a Trang An boat trip.

Worth saying plainly: a lot of the screen is visual effects and several countries' worth of plates stitched together. What you can actually stand in front of in Vietnam is the landscape, not the monsters. Go for the scenery and you will not be let down. Go expecting a theme park and you will be.

Tu Lan and Tan Hoa, Quang Binh: the main jungle

This is the one near Phong Nha, about 70km northwest of the town. The crew based themselves around Tan Hoa village, a small farming commune ringed by karst peaks, and shot across the Tu Lan valley, the lake at Yen Phu, and the surrounding caves. Yen Phu is the water Kong rises out of, and it is also near where the helicopters go down. The cave locals nicknamed the 'home of Kong' is Hang Chuot, the Rat Cave, a wide-mouthed cave in the Tan Hoa area. The vine-choked jungle the soldiers hack through, the river valleys, the sheer limestone walls: that country is genuinely there, not painted in.

Tan Hoa has its own backstory that the film helped along. It is a flood valley, underwater for weeks some years, and the tourism income from Tu Lan trekking gave the village a reason to stay and a way to make money beyond farming. So visiting is not just film-spotting, it is the thing that keeps the place going.

The terrain has not been tidied up for visitors, which is the point. You swim through caves, wade rivers and walk through real jungle to reach the spots, and that is exactly why it still looks like the film.

How to visit the Tu Lan filming locations

Tu Lan is run by Oxalis, the licensed operator, on tours that leave from Tan Hoa. There is a one day version from around $76, the standard two day, one night trip at around $292 (7,700,000 VND, prices checked June 2026), and a full four day expedition around $680. The two day is the sweet spot if your main reason is to see the filming country. You swim through several river caves, camp by a waterfall, and your guides, who are local and were often around during the shoot, will point out where the cameras and helicopters actually went.

You do not need to be an athlete, but you need to be able to swim and be comfortable in cold water and on rough ground. December to August is the season. Outside that the rivers flood and the trips stop. Book ahead in the busy months, because group sizes are capped and the popular dates sell out.

If you want the same Phong Nha jungle and caves but Tu Lan is full or you would rather book a different operator, Jungle Boss runs comparable river-cave and jungle trips in the same national park, like the Tra Ang day swim or the Hung Thoong overnight. They are not the literal film set, but they are the same landscape, the same karst, the same water you have to swim through.

Trang An and Van Long, Ninh Binh: the river world and the village

The crew shot in Ninh Binh first, with the first scenes going on camera on 27 February 2016. The boat journeys through flooded caves and between limestone towers came from the Trang An landscape complex and the nearby Tam Coc and Bich Dong area. The native village, the one the marooned pilot lives in, was built near Van Long Nature Reserve and at Trang An.

Here is the honest part about the set. A replica of the film village was put up at Trang An and opened to visitors on 15 April 2017, right after the film came out. It came down again in September 2019, partly for UNESCO conservation reasons, so there is nothing left to walk around now. What remains is the landscape itself, which is the actual draw.

To see it today you take a Trang An rowed-boat trip, a two to three hour loop through caves and around the peaks, usually around $10, year-round. Pair it with the climb up Hang Mua for the postcard view over Tam Coc and you have a full Ninh Binh day. If your Vietnam route already includes both Phong Nha and Ninh Binh, you will tick off two of the three Kong regions without planning it.

Ha Long Bay, Quang Ninh: the island from above

The wide aerial shots, the islands rising out of the sea as the team flies in, came from Ha Long Bay and the quieter Bai Tu Long Bay to the east. Vogt-Roberts started shooting there around 17 March 2016, near the end of the schedule. The Ba Hang area is the one usually named.

No specific Ha Long location is signposted as a Kong spot, and frankly you do not need one. Any standard overnight cruise puts you among the same towers of rock. If you want it to feel less like a parade of tour boats, push out to Bai Tu Long or Lan Ha, where the same scenery comes with a fraction of the crowd. Treat the film connection as a bonus, not the reason you go.

Is there a Kong tour, and is it worth chasing the locations?

Not really, not as a single packaged thing. The Kong marketing pushed hard for a couple of years after 2017 and has mostly faded. Agencies in Ninh Binh and Ha Long still attach the name to ordinary boat trips, and you should read those as a Trang An tour or a Ha Long cruise that happens to mention a film, because that is what they are. There is no statue or museum to visit, and the Trang An set is gone.

If you are a serious fan, the trip that actually delivers is Tu Lan from Tan Hoa, because the jungle, caves and water you move through really are what ended up on screen, and you experience them the way the location made sense in the first place: on foot and in the river. Build a route that links Phong Nha for Tu Lan, Ninh Binh for Trang An, and Ha Long for the islands, and you will have stood in all three Kong regions. Do it because central and northern Vietnam's karst country is some of the best scenery in Southeast Asia, and let the film be the excuse rather than the point.