Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park - Vietnam

Phong Nha - Ke Bang (Vietnamese:Vườn quốc gia Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng) is a national park and UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Bố Trach and Minh Hóa districts of central Quang Binh Province, in north-central Vietnam, about 500 km south of the nation's capital, Hanoi. The park borders the Hin Namno Nature Reserve in the province of Khammouan, Laos by the west, 42 km east of South China Sea from its borderline point. Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park is situated in a limestone zone of 2,000 km² in Vietnamese territory and borders another limestone zone of 2,000 km² of Hin Namno in Laotian territory. The core zone of this national park covers 857.54 km² and a buffer zone of 1,954 km². The park was created to protect one of the world's two largest karst regions with 300 caves and grottoes and also protects the ecosystem of limestone forest of the Annamite Range region in north central coast of Vietnam.

The park is situated around 30 km west of South China Sea and National Road 1A, near Ho Chi Minh Highway and 28 km west of Hanoi-Saigon Railway and is accessed by road or waterway by boat through the estuary in South China Sea upwards. There is a small airport near the park accessible by helicopter or small aircraft (Khe Gat Airbase), an airbase used by North Vietnamese Air Force during Vietnam War, notably in the Battle of Đồng Hới.

Phong Nha-Ke Bang area is noted for its cave and grotto systems as it is composed of 300 caves and grottos with a total length of about 70 km, of which only 20 have been surveyed by Vietnamese and British scientists; 17 of these are in located in the Phong Nha area and three in the Ke Bang area. After April 2009, total length of caves and grottoes are 126 km. Before discovery of Son Doong Cave, Phong Nha held several world cave records, as it has the longest underground river, as well as the largest caverns and passageways.

The park derives its name from Phong Nha cave, the most beautiful of all, containing many fascinating rock formations, and Ke Bang forest. The plateau on which the park is situated is probably one of the finest and most distinctive examples of a complex karst landform in Southeast Asia.

This national park was listed in UNESCO's World Heritage Sites in 2003 for its geological values as defined in its criteria viii. In April 2009, the world's largest cave Son Doong Cave, was discovered by a team of British cave explorers of British Caving Association.

Since the recognition by UNESCO in 2003, the government of Vietnam has continued to compile scientific documentation to seek recognition of the park as a world natural heritage in terms of biodiversity in addition to geographical values. According to World Wildlife Foundation report in 2000, Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park is one of 200 biodiversity centres of the world and one of the 60 significant sanctuaries of Vietnam. It has a unique forest type in the world: green tropical forest. The park also has 15 other types of forests.

The park is situated around 30 km west of South China Sea and National Road 1A, near Ho Chi Minh Highway and 28 km west of Hanoi-Saigon Railway and is accessed by road or waterway by boat through the estuary in South China Sea upwards. There is a small airport near the park accessible by helicopter or small aircraft (Khe Gat Airbase), an airbase used by North Vietnamese Air Force during Vietnam War, notably in the Battle of Đồng Hới.

Climate

Like Bac Trung Bo in general and Quang Binh Province in particular, the climate in this national park is tropical, hot, and humid. The annual mean temperature is 23 to 25 °C, with a maximum of 41 °C in the summer and a minimum of 6 °C in the winter. The hottest months in this region fall from June to August, with an average temperature of 28 °C, and the coldest months from December to February with an average temperature of 18 °C. Annual rainfall is 2,000 mm to 2,500 mm, and 88% of the rainfall is from July to December. With more than 160 rainy days per year, no month is without rain. Mean annual relative humidity is 84%.

Rivers and streams

Besides the grotto and cave systems, Phong Nha has the longest underground river. The Son and Chay are the main rivers in this national park. Most of caves here have been shaped by Son and Chay Rivers. The Son River flows into the mouth of the Phong Nha cave and keeps on underground, where it is called as the Nam Aki River. It emerges 20 km to the south near Pu-Pha-Dam Mountain.

There are over ten spectacular streams, springs and waterfalls in Phong Nha-Ke Bang area, namely: Gió waterfall, Madame Loan waterfall, Mọc stream erupting from a limestone mount range, and Trạ Ang stream.

Cave and grottoes

Phong Nha-Ke Bang is home to the largest cave in the world and covers 300 different grottoes and caves. Before Son Doong Cave was found, Phong Nha cave was regarded by British Caving Association as the top cave in the world due to its 4 top records: the longest underground river, the highest and longest cave, broadest and most beautiful fine sand beaches inside the caves, the most spectacular stalagmites and stalactites. In the survey conducted in April 2009, the British cave explorers discovered 20 new caves with total length of 56 km, including world's largest cave Son Doong. According to the assessment of UNESCO, the karst formation of Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park has evolved since the Palaeozoic (some 400 million years ago) and so is the oldest major karst area in Asia and Phong Nha displays an impressive amount of evidence of earth's history. It is a site of very great importance for increasing our understanding of the geologic, geomorphic and geo-chronological history of the region.

Tourist activities

The park is accessible by road (National Road 1A or Ho Chi Minh Highway 450 km south of Hanoi, 50 km north of Đồng Hới, 210 km north of Hue); by rail at Dong Hoi Railway Station on Hanoi-Saigon Railway; by air at Dong Hoi Airport 45 km south of the park. Tourists are served at the Tourism Service Center at Sốn Trach commune of Bố Trạch District, the entrance of this center is located by Ho Chi Minh Highway. Tourists are required to buy entrance ticket for package services, including entrance fee, boat service. Ecotourism tour (if needed) requires additional service fee. Tourists then will be transported by boat along the Son River upstream to the Phong Nha Cave and Paradise Cave. Local tour guides can speak English, French and Mandarin Chinese.

The number of tourists has increased dramatically since the park was listed in UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. Quang Binh Province has invested into upgrading the Phong Nha-Ke Bang visitor site to turn it into one of Vietnam's major tourist destinations.

Multiple eco-tourist projects have been licensed for development and the area is being heavily developed by the province to turn it into a major tourist site in Vietnam. Phong Nha Ke Bang is part of a tourism promotion program called: "Middle World Heritage Road" which includes the ancient capital of Hue, the Champa relics of My Son, the city of Hội An, nha nhac and the Space of Gong Culture in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.

Tourist activities in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park are organized by local travel agencies and vary in form:

Tour for expedition of caves and grottos in boats and with professional cave expedition means.

Ecotourism, discovering the flora and fauna in this national park in the Ke Bang Forest.

Mountain climbing, trekking: There are extreme sloping mountains here with a height of over 1,000 m, which is a real challenge for adventurous climbers.

One of the adventure tour sites is boating upward on the Chay River into primitive forests, as the river becomes sinuous with several waterfalls and whirlpools until tourists arrive at Tro Mong. This tour sites have been surveyed and included in local travel agents besides cave exploration tour. In Phong Nha-Ke Bang park, there are is a 50m-high waterfall, Chai Waterfall. There is a bull field called Ran Bo (Bull Field) because wild bulls usually comes and reproduce in mating season. There are also some interesting tourist attractions in this park like Nước Ngang (lit.: Horizontal Spring), a spring runs horizontally instead of vertically as usual; Ðá Nằm (Crouching Stone), a stone blockading a stream current; Chân Thớt (Chopping Board), a chopping-board-shaped stone. But above all, the most spectacular scene is this area is Nước Trồi (Surfacing Stream), a stream surfacing from the ground. Several streams here run for a long distance, then disappear under the ground.

Thanks to the tourism development in this national park, about 1000 local residents have jobs in tourism. The provincial Centre for Phong Nha-Ke Bang's Ecotourism and Culture currently has 248 boats, creating jobs for 500 locals. Every boat has two trained boatmen earning VND 70,000 per day. This income is relatively high for peasants in this province. This centre also launched a programme in 2000 to train former loggers to work as photographers taking pictures for tourists and about 300 former loggers are now doing this.

In order to facilitate the increasing flow of tourists to the site, the Dong Hoi Airport was constructed and put into operation in May 2008 with air link with Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport and air link with Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat International Airport beginning from 1 July 2009.

Phong Nha-Ke Bang, together with Ha Long Bay and Fansipan of Vietnam, is listed as a candidate for 7 new world natural wonders vote. As of February 12, 2008 it ranked 10th in the voting list

In January 2009, the United States-based Los Angeles Times listed Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in its recommended world's 29 destinations to visit in 2009.

Source, Images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phong_Nha_Ke_Bang_National_Park 

Hoi An - Vietnam

Hội An, or rarely Faifo, is a city of Vietnam, on the coast of the South China Sea in the South Central Coast of Vietnam. It is located in Quang Nam province and is home to approximately 120,000 inhabitants. It is recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The city possessed the largest harbour in Southeast Asia in the 1st century and was known as Lâm Ấp Phố (Champa City). Between the seventh and 10th centuries, the Cham (people of Champa) controlled the strategic spice trade and with this came tremendous wealth. The former harbour town of the Cham at the estuary of the Thu Bồn River was an important Vietnamese trading centre in the 16th and 17th centuries, where Chinese from various provinces as well as Japanese, Dutch and Indians settled. During this period of the China trade, the town was called Hai Pho (Seaside Town) in Vietnamese. Originally, Hai Pho was a divided town with the Japanese settlement across the "Japanese Bridge" (16th-17th century). The bridge (Chùa cầu) is a unique covered structure built by the Japanese, the only known covered bridge with a Buddhist pagoda attached to one side.

The town was known to the French and Spanish as “Faifo”, and by similar names in Portuguese and Dutch. A number of theories have been put forth as to the origin of this name. Some scholars have suggested that it comes from the word "hải-phố" meaning "sea town", while others have said that it is more likely simply a shortening of Hội An-phố , "the town of Hội An", to "Hoi-pho" which became "Faifo"

History

The early history of Hội An is that of the Cham. These Malayo-Polynesian peoples probably came from Java around 200 B.C. and by 200 A.D. created the Champa Empire which stretched from Huế to beyond Nha Trang. In the early years, Mỹ Sơn was the spiritual capital, Trà Kiệu was the political capital and Hội An was the commercial capital of the Champa Empire - later, by the 14th century, the Cham moved further down towards Nha Trang. The river system was the transportation for goods between the highlands, inland countries of Laos and Thailand and the low lands.

In 1535 Portuguese explorer and sea captain António de Faria, coming from Đà Nẵng, tried to establish a major trading center at the port village of Faifo. Hội An was founded as a trading port by the Nguyễn Lord Nguyễn Hoàng sometime around 1595. The Nguyễn Lords were far more interested in commercial activity than the Trịnh Lords who ruled the north. As a result, Hội An flourished as a trading port and became the most important trade port on the South China Sea. Captain William Adams, the English sailor and confidant of Tokugawa Ieyasu, is known to have made at least one trading mission to Hội An (around 1619).

In the 18th century, Hội An was considered by Chinese and Japanese merchants to be the best destination for trading in all of Southeast Asia, even Asia. Japanese believed the heart of all of Asia (the dragon) lay beneath the earth of Hội An. The city also rose to prominence as a powerful and exclusive trade conduit between Europe, China, India, and Japan, especially for the ceramic industry. Shipwreck discoveries have shown that Vietnamese and Asian ceramics were transported from Hội An to as far as Sinai, Egypt.

Hội An's importance waned sharply at the end of the 18th century because of the collapse of Nguyễn rule (thanks to the Tây Sơn Rebellion - which was opposed to foreign trade). Then, with the triumph of Emperor Gia Long, he repaid the French for their aid by giving them exclusive trade rights to the nearby port town of Đà Nẵng. Đà Nẵng became the new center of trade (and later French influence) in central Vietnam while Hội An was a forgotten backwater. Local historians also say that Hội An lost its status as a desirable trade port due to silting up of the river mouth. The result was that Hội An remained almost untouched by the changes to Vietnam over the next 200 years.

Today, the town is a tourist attraction because of its traditional architecture, crafts such as textiles and ceramics preserved and visitors are exploited. Many bars, hotels, and resorts have been constructed both in Hội An and the surrounding area. The port mouth and boats are still used for both fishing and tourism.

Weather

Calm mild weather is now limited to the season of May/June - end of August when the seas are calm and wind changes direction and comes from the South. The remainder of the year the weather is intermittent between rain & cold and hot and mild. Popular activities such as visiting offshore Cù lao Chàm islands are only guaranteed to be likely during the short season of end of May - end of August, which is the high season for domestic tourism.

Heritage and tourism

In 1999, the old town was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO as a well-preserved example of a Southeast Asian trading port of the 15th to 19th centuries, with buildings that display a unique blend of local and foreign influences. According to the UNESCO Impact Report 2008 on Hội An, tourism has bought changes to the area which are not sustainable without mitigation.

The city has various small museums highlighting the history of the region, especially ceramics, such as the Museum of Trade Ceramics. The Museum of Sa Huỳnh Culture was built in 1995, and has over 430 ceramic items from 8th to 18th Century. The items originating from Persia, China, Thailand, India and other countries are proofs of the importance of Hội An as a major trading port in South East Asia.

Get Around

The centre of Hoi An is very small and pedestrianised, so you will be walking around most of the time. Motorbikes are only banned from the center of town during certain times of day, so keep an eye out for motorized kamikazes, even in the most narrow alleys. However, the city's government does not allow motorbikes to enter the Old Town on the 14th and 15th of each lunar month. On those evenings, a lot of activities, including traditional games such as bai choi, trong quan, and dap nieu are held in all over the town.

To go to the beach or reach some of the more remote hotels, it is easy and cheap to hire a bicycle. Taxis can be found in the middle of Le Loi Street, over the river on An Hoi or called by phone. When busy, taxis may refuse your fare back to your hotel from town if it is too close, opting for larger fares. Arranging a shuttle from your hotel may be a better option although prices can be higher.

Traffic in Hoi An is minimal, so if you've been avoiding getting on a bike in the big cities, small towns and the surrounding countryside like Hoi An are ideal to get used to the road rules. Get a car to visit My Son early in the morning, about an hour away, or the Marble Mountains, about forty minutes north towards Da Nang.

The old Champa way was to travel by the river system. The rivers of Hoi An cover hundreds of kilometers and offer an interesting & adventurous alternative to travelling by road. Get on a boat and you'll begin to see a whole lot more of Hoi An and the Delta.

Sources, Images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoi_An, http://wikitravel.org/en/Hoi_An

Halong Bay – Vietnam

Ha Long Bay (literally: "Descending Dragon Bay"; Vietnamese: Vinh Ha Long) is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a popular travel destination, located in Quang Ninh province, Vietnam. Administratively, the bay belongs to Ha Long City, Cam Pha town, and part of Van Don district. The bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various sizes and shapes. Ha Long Bay is a center of a larger zone which includes Bai Tu Long bay to the northeast, and Cat Ba islands to the southwest. These larger zones share similar geological, geographical, geomorphological, climate, and cultural characters.

Ha Long Bay has an area of around 1,553 km², including 1,960 islets, most of which are limestone. The core of the bay has an area of 334 km² with a high density of 775 islets. The limestone in this bay has gone through 500 million years of formation in different conditions and environments. The evolution of the karst in this bay has taken 20 million years under the impact of the tropical wet climate. The geo-diversity of the environment in the area has created biodiversity, including a tropical evergreen biosystem, oceanic and sea shore biosystem. Ha Long Bay is home to 14 endemic floral species and 60 endemic faunal species.

The bay consists of a dense cluster of over 3,000 limestone monolithic islands (although locals claim there are only 1,969 as this is the year of Ho Chi Minh's death), each topped with thick jungle vegetation, rising spectacularly from the ocean. Several of the islands are hollow, with enormous caves. Hang Dau Go (Wooden stakes cave) is the largest grotto in the Ha Long area. French tourists visited in the late 19th century, and named the cave Grotte des Merveilles. Its three large chambers contain large numerous stalactites and stalagmites (as well as 19th century French graffiti). There are two bigger islands, Tuan Chau and Cat Ba, that have permanent inhabitants. Both of them have tourist facilities including hotels and beaches. There are a number of beautiful beaches on the smaller islands.

Some of the islands support floating villages of fishermen, who ply the shallow waters for 200 species of fish and 450 different kinds of mollusks. Many of the islands have acquired their names as a result of interpretation of their unusual shapes. Such names include Voi Islet (elephant), Ga Choi Islet (fighting cock), and Mai Nha Islet (roof). 989 of the islands have been given names. Birds and animals including bantams, antelopes, monkeys, and lizards also live on some of the islands.

Almost all these islands are as individual towers in a classic fenglin landscape with heights from 50m to 100m, and height/width ratios of up to about six. Another specific feature of Halong Bay is the abundance of lakes inside the limestone islands. For example, Dau Be island has six enclosed lakes. All these island lakes occupy drowned dolines within fengcong karst.

A community of around 1,600 people live on Ha Long Bay in four fishing villages: Cua Van, Ba Hang, Cong Tau and Vong Vieng in Hung Thang commune, Ha Long city. They live on floating houses and are sustained through fishing and marine aquaculture (cultivating marine biota).

In 1962, the Vietnam Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism designated Ha Long Bay a 'Renowned National Landscape Monument'.

Trong Cave

Ha Long Bay was first listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994, in recognition of its outstanding, universal aesthetic value. In 2000 the World Heritage Committee additionally recognised Ha Long Bay for its outstanding geological and geomorphological value, and its World Heritage Listing was updated.

In 2009, the New 7 Wonders Foundation, which runs the New Seven Wonders of the World program, included Halong Bay on its list of nominations as one the World's 7 Natural Wonders.

Due to a simultaneous combination of ideal factors such as thick, pale, grey, and strong limestone layers, which are formed by fine-grained materials; hot and moist climate and slow tectonic process as a whole; Ha Long Bay has had a complete karst evolution for 20 million years. There are many types of karst topography in the bay, such as karst field.

Some of the most remarkable geological events in Ha Long Bay’s history in the last 1,000 years, include the advance of the sea, the raising of the bay area, strong erosion that has formed coral, and, pure blue and heavily salted water. This process of erosion by seawater has deeply engraved the stone, contributing to its fantastic beauty. Present-day Ha Long Bay is the result of this long process of geological evolution that has been influenced by so many factors.

Due to all these factors, tourists visiting Ha Long Bay are not only treated to one of the natural wonders of the world, but also to a precious geological museum that has been naturally preserved in the open air for the last 300 million years.

Halong Bay is host to two ecosystems: a tropical, moist, evergreen rainforest ecosystem; and a marine and coastal ecosystem. The bay is home to seven endemic species.



Sungsot Cave





The Kissing Rocks



Source, Images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halong_Bay

Some images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/