The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in Vietnam
6 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful natural wonders in Vietnam are Son Doong Cave, Tam Cốc-Bích Động and Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường). The list covers 6 natural wonders. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Vietnam's natural wonders lie mostly underground. In the Annamite Mountains along the border with Laos, rivers have been dissolving ancient limestone for millions of years, creating some of the largest cave systems on Earth. Further north, the same kind of rock rises from the rice fields as sheer towers, and on the central coast volcanic basalt forms a very different kind of landscape.
Son Doong Cave in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park has the largest known cave passage in the world, with a jungle growing inside where its roof has collapsed. Tam Coc-Bich Dong in Ninh Binh is a valley of karst towers where boats are rowed through three caves along a river between rice paddies. Paradise Cave, discovered in 2005, stretches for more than 30 kilometres and is filled with white stalactites and stalagmites. Ganh Da Dia on the coast of Phu Yen is a headland of tightly packed basalt columns. Phong Nha Cave is entered by boat along an underground river beneath walls of dripstone.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Son Doong Cave | Cave | |
| 2 | Tam Cốc-Bích Động | Cave | |
| 3 | Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường) | Show cave | |
| 4 | Hang Én (swift cave) | Cave | |
| 5 | Ganh Da Dia | Rock formation | |
| 6 | Phong Nha Cave | Cave |
01 Son Doong Cave
Vietnam · 33.3 km from Đồng Hới17.457° N 106.288° E
Trantuanviet · CC BY-SA 4.0 A local man, Hồ Khanh, found the entrance in 1990 while searching for agarwood, but was put off by the roar of water and the wind blowing out of it, and later could not find it again. He relocated it in 2008 at the request of British cavers, and in April 2009 an expedition of the British Cave Research Association led by Howard Limbert surveyed the cave.
Did you know? The expedition named the first doline Watch Out for Dinosaurs, because its ferns, fog and sheer cliffs looked like a prehistoric scene.
02 Tam Cốc-Bích Động
Vietnam · 7.3 km from Ninh Bình20.218° N 105.916° E
Image by nghi123mt from Pixabay Tam Cốc was the first boat route developed in the province and remains its oldest. Rowers, many of them local women, take visitors out from the landing and famously often row with their feet. The round trip takes around two hours, and the scenery shifts with the farming year: green paddy in the growing season, gold before the harvest and silvery water once the fields are flooded.
Did you know? The nearby Thái Vi temple honours the Trần emperors along with the famous general Trần Hưng Đạo, who defeated the Mongols.
03 Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường)
Vietnam17.520° N 106.223° E
Image by dietmarlaschinski from Pixabay The name refers to the decoration. The passages are huge — up to 72 m high and 150 m wide — and filled with stalactites and stalagmites, columns, curtains and terraces of calcite. The formations are bigger and more elaborate than those of Phong Nha, and in the shaded light the chambers look like underground cathedrals.
Did you know? Its blind cave scorpion, known in Vietnamese as the Paradise scorpion, belongs to Pseudochactidae, a small and unusual scorpion family.
04 Hang Én (swift cave)
Vietnam · 32.3 km from Đồng Hới17.435° N 106.300° E
Jérémie B. · CC BY-SA 4.0 The name means "swift cave", after the birds that nest by the thousands on its ceiling and stream in and out of its mouths. The Arem, a small forest people, knew the cave for generations: they sheltered in it on their seasonal journeys and climbed its walls on ladders of branches and vines to take swifts, an important part of their diet.
Did you know? The river that vanishes inside Hang Én pointed explorers toward Hang Sơn Đoòng, the largest known cave passage on Earth.
05 Ganh Da Dia
Vietnam · 28.1 km from Tuy Hòa13.335° N 109.298° E
Đông Hồ · CC BY-SA 2.0 The formation covers an area roughly 250 metres long and 100 metres wide. It was produced by volcanic activity millions of years ago: basalt from eruptions on the Vân Hòa Plateau flowed toward the coast and, meeting cold seawater, cooled and contracted so rapidly that it cracked into vertical polygonal columns. The waves later split many of these columns horizontally, giving them their disc-like appearance.
Did you know? When clearing work was carried out in 2018, workers uncovered further honeycomb-patterned rock surfaces facing the known formation.
06 Phong Nha Cave
Vietnam · 35.5 km from Đồng Hới17.582° N 106.282° E
Image by pen_ash from Pixabay The cave is also a historical site. Long before the area came under Vietnamese rule, it belonged to the Champa kingdom, and one of the chambers, Bi Ky, holds a Cham inscription carved on a rock slab along with terracotta votive pieces dating from around the 9th century. Some scholars think the grotto served as a Cham place of worship between the 9th and 11th centuries.
Did you know? The Cham terracotta votive pieces found in the cave are linked to the consecration of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara in the 9th century.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful natural wonders in Vietnam?
- On our list, Son Doong Cave ranks first, followed by Tam Cốc-Bích Động and Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường).
- Who discovered Son Doong Cave?
- A local man, Ho Khanh, found the entrance in 1991, and it was explored and surveyed by the British Cave Research Association with him in 2009.
- Why is Tam Coc called Ha Long Bay on land?
- Its limestone towers rising from flat rice fields and rivers resemble the karst islands of Ha Long Bay, but they stand inland in Ninh Binh province.
- Is Phong Nha-Ke Bang a UNESCO site?
- Yes. The national park was listed in 2003 for its karst landscape and caves and extended in 2015 for its biodiversity.
- How many natural wonders are on this list in Vietnam?
- The list covers 6 natural wonders.