Ha Long Bay

Nearly two thousand limestone islets rise straight out of the green water of Ha Long Bay, in Vietnam's far north-east, spread over some 1,550 square kilometres of the Gulf of Tonkin. Most are uninhabited and many are little more than sheer-sided pillars capped with jungle, their bases undercut by the sea into overhangs and notches. Seen from a boat, they overlap in receding ranks that grow paler with every layer of haze, which is exactly the effect that has made the bay one of the most painted and photographed seascapes in Asia.

The scenery is the drowned end of a karst landscape. The rock itself is hundreds of millions of years old, but the shapes are the work of roughly twenty million years of tropical rain dissolving it: clusters of cone-shaped hills in some parts of the bay, isolated towers standing alone in others. When sea levels rose, the valleys between them filled with water, leaving the summits as islands. Rain and waves have also hollowed out caves. Sung Sot, the "Surprise Cave", opens into huge chambers; Thien Cung is known for its dripstone; and Dau Go, the "Cave of Wooden Stakes", takes its name from a story tied to the 13th-century wars against the Mongols, when stakes were driven into the bed of the nearby Bach Dang River to wreck the invading fleet at low tide.

The name means "descending dragon": in local legend, dragons sent to defend the country spat out jewels that became the islands and walls against the invaders. Many individual rocks carry names drawn from their silhouettes, such as the Fighting Cocks, the Elephant or the Roof. People have lived around the bay for a very long time, and archaeologists distinguish a succession of prehistoric cultures here reaching back to about 18,000 BC. Today a small population still lives in floating villages such as Cua Van, raising fish in net pens among the rocks.

UNESCO listed the bay in 1994 for its beauty and added its geology as a second ground in 2000. It merges with Bai Tu Long Bay to the north-east and Lan Ha Bay and Cat Ba Island to the south-west, so the same landscape continues well beyond the core zone, often with fewer boats.

Getting there

The bay lies along the coast of Ha Long city in Quang Ninh province; Cam Pha, on the eastern shore, is about 14 km from the core of the bay. The nearest airport is Van Don International Airport (VDO), about 33 km away in a straight line. Most visitors come by road from Hanoi, roughly 140–165 km depending on the route, via the Hanoi–Haiphong expressway. Day trips and overnight cruises leave mainly from Tuan Chau harbour on Tuan Chau Island and from the Bai Chay waterfront.