Backpacking in Central African Republic 🇨🇫: Top 7 Sights in Bangui

“Ride across the river, deep and wide” – Mark Knopfler.

My Bangor to Bangui story is a wild one. I’ve already chaptertitled it for a future book in the third series (200th – 300th country series) I grew up in the 1980s in the north down peninsula of Northern Ireland’s seaside coast in the beach city of Bangor. Bangor looks like this –

Life took me away from Bangor in September 2003, to Bournemouth on England’s south coast, and further afield after October 2009. Since that day, I never returned to Northern Ireland as a resident, only had a month back there in 2007 (broken leg) and 2015 (relaxing with family). Then in a BANG lettric twist of fate, in early January 2025, I ended up backpacking in Bangui, the capital of The Central African Republic on the banks of the river looking across the border into the Democratic Republic Of The Congo. BANGor to BANGui. How nuts that I am writing a top sights article on Don’t Stop Living about BANGUI before I have done a top sights article on BANGOR!

December 2024 to January 2025 was a wacaday trip, one which saw three visa failures for Central African Republic before we were finally granted the visa just 7 minutes before boarding the flight in. They really weren’t going to let us in! Thanks to Tognama from Gust Hotel (which you will hear/read/see a lot more about) and Desree, who collected us from the airport and is pictured below!

“Search for the hero inside yourself” – M.People!

Tognama below, visa hero at the last hour!

And our excellent Hotel, Gust Hotel – super review to come!!

Firstly we tried to get the Central African Republic visa from the French Embassy in Warszawa. We filled in all the relevant forms, sent them all a month before our trip, 5th December 2024. They refused us, and were frankly very rude to us. Oh well, shame on your moon…

Secondly we tried to get the Central African Republic visa at their Embassy in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Our contact Fabio promised the visa would be processed within a few days. We arrived in Burkina Faso on 19th December and left on 26th December. You would think a week would be enough time, especially as he took a whopping 260 Euros off us (130 Euros each) in cash. Christmas time didn’t help, and the embassy’s only guy there decided to go on holiday instead of granting us two visas.

Thirdly, our final attempt was in Ivory Coast. The Internet told us there is an Embassy in Abidjan. But after spending over an hour touring the city’s embassy district, it was clear that the Central African Republic embassy here, no longer existed. We found the building though, and decided not to backpack through it seeking a visa…

But we battled on, and via our contact Tognama, manager of the truly excellent Gust Hotel we finally got granted a visa with 7 minutes before our flight, via What’s App. We made a mad dash and were the last two passengers to board the plane. Phew!

Now that we were finally in Bangui, we organised a day tour to see the top sights in textbook style. I’ve only included a top 7 here, this was all we needed and wanted, I’m sure you can find and discover more. But this is the timeshell we’ve been given.

1.President Monument – Faustin-Archange Touadéra

It’s always a good idea to respect the president in a country like this which is a Unitary presidential republic, basically a dictatorship led by the President. Faustin-Archange Touadéra is the current president as of January 2025, and has been in power since 2016. There are many and various monuments and dedications to him. The only one we stopped at for a photo was the one near the airport. Tognama joined us in the photo. You can’t miss it if you are arriving and leaving by air.

2.Catholic Cathedral of Notre Dame

The main religion in Central African Republic is Christianity, at 73%, most of them are Catholics. There are so so many churches everywhere in the country, you will see a lot. However, we headed to the main Catholic Cathedral of Notre Dame. A gospel choir sang out eloquently on entrance and as it was our last leg of this trip, I popped in to pray. I didn’t know how long it would be until I’d be in another church.

This Cathedral held the Coronation Mass of Jean-Bédel Bokassa (Bokassa I) in 1977 and the opening of the first holy door of the Catholic Church’s Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy on 29 November 2015.

3.Grande Mosque

Although, Central African Republic is over 70% Christian, there are still quite a few Mosques here. We headed to the Grande Mosquee, but saw many others. In keeping with the Bangor theme, it’s yellow and blue. Seaside boy.

4.National Football Stadium (Stade Barthélemy Boganda)

In every country, I backpack, I always try to visit a national football stadium. Here, we were able to get in to the stadium and dander onto the tracks and pitch.

Stade Barthélemy Boganda, is the national stadium of the Central African Republic. It is located at Complexe Sportif Barthélemy Boganda and it is currently used mostly for football matches. The stadium has a maximum capacity of 50,000 for sports matches and includes the national flag in the seating colour pattern.

5.Grande Marche (Main Market)

To put it mildly, this place is nuts. Nuts loyal in fact. The craziest markets I have seen in my life are in China, Benin and Central African Republic. Due to a police and army issue, we didn’t take any photos after a suitcase purchase in a fish and clothes shop, but the market is nuts. More like a story for a book or a different post, not a backpacking top sights post!

6.National Assembly

While photos should be avoided, at least from our experience, you can still stop and admire the National Assembly. We heard of tourist being allowed inside, but we weren’t interested in that, or anything more. Our driver stopped here, and also at a few other government buildings as well as some rebellion movement place. We didn’t take photographs. Rare for me, but that’s after a scam which I wrote about below.

7.View Of DR Congo at Ubangi River

It’s always a beautiful thing to stand in one country, staring at another. I’ve forgotten the number of times I’ve done this. Bangui has one of the most magnificent moments I’ve ever had doing this.

You are in Bangui, Central African Republic and you stare across at Zongo, Democratic Republic of The Congo. This time I wouldn’t be crossing into DR Congo, though I did enjoy backpacking Bukavu before – we backpacked the Rwanda to DR Congo border in 2019 under wild circumstances for a gorilla tour. In fact, on that tour, we scammed them…

Although we toured this top 7, we skipped some other sights and lost a bit of enthusiasm, because I must note that we used a local lad called Michael/Mickal/Michkal and he’s a cheat, a scammer and a scummer. Here are some photos of him. Avoid the lad. He is even in some of our photos earlier and gave us a fake name. Nuthead.

He got us deliberately involved in a £100 scam where we had to hand over that money to the local police and army for allegedly “taking a photo”. We didn’t ever find out what photo it was. They didn’t want to see our photos, or even for that to be deleted, they just wanted the money. The police hold your passports when you arrive in Central African Republic and then, after getting them back, they held them again at a hotel which seemed to be involved in the scam. Ah well, it’s done now.

After that, despite requesting a few specific restaurants to Mickal for our late lunch that day, he insisted on taking us to the Four Seasons / Quatre Saisons Hotel. We hated that place apart from the decent staff and Chinese chef – Michael/Mickal/Michkal then ordered the most expensive item on the menu making sure we paid for it. In a restaurant with no other customers. His meal and beer was 12,500. The entire bill, including beers for Marek and I was 23,000 so his was more than half. Nuthead.

So that was a top 7 for you – it was all we needed in the end, as actually my highlights in Central African Republic were these –

• Boali Waterfalls (amazing)
• The countryside to and from Boali
• National Football Stadium
• DR Congo Zongo River viewpoint
• Being invited to a wedding in Bangui as the only two foreigners
• Trying Bili Bili, a local black market alcohol

 

Please do stay at the Gust Hotel. Our friend, guide, the manager Tognama is a legend in the proper sense of the word. He sorted our visa, solved our passport issue and went all the way to Boali Falls with us!!!

Here are some videos from my time in Bangui: