Ha Long Bay listed among world’s top destinations

(Cinet) – Ha Long Bay deemed a World Heritage site in 1994 in the northern province of Quang Ninh has been listed among the top eight most beautiful landscapes in the world by mymodernmet.com.

Recognized as world heritage since 1994, the bay is filled with a dense cluster of over 1,600 limestone monolithic islands, each topped with thick jungle vegetation, which gently rise out of the ocean. Among these islands you can find hidden lagoons, beautiful beaches, countless caves and unique grottoes of all shapes and sizes, places just waiting to be explored.

Previously, US magazine, Business Insider released a list of “100 trips you must take in your lifetime” and Vietnam’s beautiful Ha Long Bay was included in the list.

The bay has also been cited as a vision of outstanding beauty and one of the world’s top ten Valentine’s Day getaways by US-based National Geographic magazine.

Other destinations of the list of eight most beautiful landscapes in the world are Plitvice Lakes in Croatia, Abraham Lake in Alberta, Canada, Lake Hillier- the Pink Lake in Australia, Lake Baikal in Russia, Wuhua Hai – Five-Flower Lake in China, Caño Cristales – River of Five Colors in Colombia, and Iguazu Falls in Brazil and Argentina.

Ha Long Bay, located in the Gulf of Tonkin, within Quang Ninh Province, in the northeast of Vietnam, is165 km from the capital of Ha Noi. Covering an area of 43,400 ha and including over 1600 islands and islets, most of which are uninhabitated and unaffected by humans, it forms a spectacular seascape of limestone pillars and is an ideal model of a mature Karst landscape developed during a warm and wet tropical climate. The property’s exceptional scenic beauty is complemented by its great biological interest. The outstanding value of the property is centered around the drowned limestone karst landforms, displaying spectacular pillars with a variety of coastal erosional features such as arches and caves which form a majestic natural scenery. The repeated regression and transgression of the sea on the limestone karst over geological time has produced a mature landscape of clusters of conical peaks and isolated towers which were modified by sea invasion, adding an extra elemant to the process of lateral undercutting of the limstone towers and islands.

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