Halong Bay- One of Vietnam’s two world natural heritages recognized by UNESCO

Halong Bay has been recognized as a World Natural Heritage not only for its thousands of natural islands, but also for its geographical and geomorphologic values. It is said that Halong Bay is a legendary world and one of the most magnificent scenic spots in Vietnam as well.

 Halong Bay in Quang Ninh province has been recognized as a World Natural Heritage not only for its thousands of natural islands since 1994, but also for its geographical and geomorphologic values since 2000. It is said that Halong Bay is a legendary world and one of the most magnificent scenic spots in Vietnam as well.

Situated in North-East of Vietnam (150km from Hanoi), the Bay is in the Gulf of Tonkin which comprised of regions of Halong City, the township of Cam Pha, and a part of the island district of Van Don. It abuts Cat Ba Island in the southwest. Toward the west is the coastline 120km long. The site is 1553 sq.km with 1969 islands of various sizes, of which 989 have been named.

Viewed from above, Halong Bay resembles a geographic work of art. While exploring the bay, tourists who travel to Vietnam feel lost in a legendary world of stone islands. Halong bay is also a region of highly-concentrated biological diversity with many ecosystems of salt water-flooded forests, coral reefs, and tropical forests featuring thousands of species of animal and plant life.

Aesthetic value

The permanent beauty of Ha Long is created by three factors: stone, water and sky. Ha Long’s island system is multicolored with a variety of shapes and can be regarded as a water-color, a work of art. The islands, scattered all round, have different shapes which provoke the imagination: Dinh Huong (Incense Burner) implies spiritual significance, Ga Choi (Fighting Cocks) the symbol of Viet Nam tourism, Con Coc (Toad) recalls the passage of time, waiting thousands of years to seek justice in Heaven. There are islands that resemble a resplendent throne, a Vietnamese mother’s curved back carrying her child, a roof, an old man, a human head and so on.

Within the bigger islands are great attractions. Dau Go Cave (Wooden Stakes) dazzles the senses with many huge stalactites hanging poised in mid air and stalagmites growing majestically upwards. Then there is Thien Cung Grotto (Heavenly Palace) with its small, narrow entrance, but inside looking like a marvelous palace, and many other caves each has its own attractions and beauty.

Ha Long’s sea is always the same, blue, smooth and still. Ha Long has its own beauty by seasons. In spring, buds of trees burst on limestone islands. In summer, it is cool and clean with many sparkling sun rays reflecting from the sea’s surface. In autumn, especially at night, moonlight illuminates the mountains so they appear like gold, inlaid into the earth. In winter, with pervasive frost, Ha Long is glamorous as “a floating flower basket on smooth wave” (by writer Nguyen Tuan).

Karst geomorphologic value:

Ha Long Bay is a mature karst landscape developed during a warm, wet, tropical climate. The sequence of stages in the evolution of a karst landscape over a period of 20 million years requires a combination of several distinct elements including massive thickness of limestone, a hot wet climate and slow overall tectonic uplift.

The bio diversity value

Bio-diversity is an important natural resource and needs to be preserved and conserved to maintain the ecological balance of the whole region. Bio-diversity is the general term used to reflect diversify and abundance in nature and includes all living things.

The total number of plant species living on the rugged islands in Ha Long Bay is still not known, as many islands remain unexplored. There are probably over a thousand species of plants, the distribution of which is not uniform. Instead, several different communities (species of plants that always grow together) are found, such as: mangrove, seashore plants, those of the slopes or sheer cliffs, the summit plants and those that grow around the mouth of caves and in gullies. .

In 2002 a survey on assessing and auditing Ha Long Bay’s bio-diversity was conducted by management authorities and researchers. They surveyed 9 areas in Zone 1 of the World Heritage and all sites had maintained its bio-diversity and species diversity, and more new species were discovered.

Evaluation and Praises

Throughout the ages many famous men, from both home and abroad, when faced with the beauty of Halong’s sky and water have sung its praises in different ways, especially in poems.

In the 15th Century, Nguyen Trai (1380 – 1442), a great national poet visited Halong and spoke of:

“The way to Van Do has so many mountains

Nature has produced a wonder in the immense space

The vast blue sea looks like a grandiose mirror

Reflecting innumerable black mountains”.

Over 100 years ago, the French Journalist John Rey praised Ha Long:

“ In the brilliant light of the tropical sun, the sea surface, dark and light, here and there in the shadow of limestone mountains, is really an indescribable, fanciful scene. Sunset looks like a flaring fire, throwing all the islands into a fairyland.”

Nowadays, many domestic and international politicians, poets, cultural celebrities and tourists make the same comment when they visit Halong Bay: “If you haven’t visited Ha Long Bay, you haven’t been to Viet Nam.”

In recent years, Halong Bay has been honored to welcome many international delegations, including the leaders of many countries of the world.

Buddhist Woodblocks in Vinh Nghiem Pagoda listed World Heritage by UNESCO

A collection of valuable woodblocks printed with Buddhist Sutras was officially listed as world heritage by UNESCO on May 16. Traveling to Vietnam and paying a visit to Vinh Nghiem Pagoda in Bac Giang province, tourists will freely see these valuable woodblocks.

The collection of valuable woodblocks was made in the early 14th century by monks at the Vinh Nghiem Pagoda in the northern province of Bac Giang.

Buddhist Woodblocks in Vinh Nghiem Pagoda listed World Heritage by UNESCO

A collection of valuable woodblocks in Vinh Nghiem Pagoda listed as "World Heritage"

The blocks tell a history of woodblock carving in Vietnam and provide insights into the skilled work of the pagoda's eminent monks.

The collection of more than 3,000 woodblocks provides a wide range of information on the formation, development and ideology of Truc Lam Zen Buddhism, founded by King Tran Nhan Tong in the 11th century.

A UNESCO official visited Vinh Nghiem Pagoda and worked with provincial authorities in March to work on the artifacts listing as ‘world documentary heritage'.

During the surveys, researchers noted that these woodblocks were carved by artisans in Bac Giang, Bac Ninh and Hai Duong provinces during different periods. They were made of thi wood taken from the pagoda's garden.

This type of wood is soft, smooth, durable and easy to carve and it rarely distorts or cracks. The woodblocks were carved in Han Chinese or Nom scripts, using a very difficult and sophisticated technique.

The quality of the craftsmanship of each woodblock reflects that the artisans were not only excellent carvers but also skilled in arranging the documents and fluent in han Chinese and Nom scripts.

The size of the woodblocks varies depending on the categories of the sutras. The biggest woodblock is over 1m in length and 40-50cm in width. The smallest one is only 15 by 20cm. The surface of the woodblocks has a shiny black colour, due to leftover printing ink.

The UN culture agency launched the Memory of the World Programme in 1992 to guard against collective amnesia and to call upon the preservation of valuable archives and library collections all over the world to ensure their wider dissemination.

Please visit Vinh Nghiem pagoda, you will take the chance to admire the collection of  these extremely valuable woodblocks.

Trang An landscapes complex - World Heritage List

 Located in the centre of the province of Ninh Binh, 80 km from the city of Hanoi to the south, Trang An is a complex of scenic landscapes and historical and cultural heritages boasting a system of adjoining limestone mountains and valleys belonging to the ancient ocean branch of the Tethys from China into Vietnam, on an area of around 10,000 ha, including three areas: Trang An eco-tourism site, Tam Coc – Bich Dong tourism site and Hoa Lu Ancient Capital cultural and historical heritage site.

Trang An complex is often referred to as a “Halong Bay on land”, but few people know that only a few thousand years also there existed an ancient bay demonstrated by the water marks on the limestone cliffs, vestiges of oysters on them, abrasion terraces, and marine sediments of the Quaternary period.

Trang An is also a tropical karst landscape with a humid monsoon climate, and witnessed a lot of sea invasions and transformations similar to Halong Bay; its karst landscape are terrestrial, concentrated on a smaller area, and regular in variety of shapes and sizes.

The landscape is replete with tower shaped karst along the fringe of a block of limestone islands with flat peaks of varying styles. The karst islands are widely scattered among incoherent flat fields and, in season, neighbor to a sea of golden grain.

These cone shapes of different sizes seem to be floating, scattered and unconnected on the even and flat rice fields, filed with the color of ripen rice. The karst landscape, with a pyramid shape in the middle, connects the sharp pointed peaks into a chain with vertical cliffs enclosing deep valleys in an isometric or linear form.

Trang An is made up of a complex of scenic landscapes and has intricate and diversified ecosystems, particularly as a cradle of the prehistoric people.

All these factors have made a scenic landscapes complex of Trang An to have outstanding and distinctive values terms of landscape, geomorphology, geology, and culture.

Values in terms of landscape and karst geomorphology:

Trang An has many types of distinctive and unique karst landscape: “remaining karst hills separated from the plains”, “peaks connecting valleys”, “peaks connecting sinkholes”, “tropical karst submerged by the sea”.

No where else in the world is there a landscape similar to Ha Long Bay but fossilized on land like in Trang An.

No where else in the world is the karst terrain shaped like a narrow wall with sloped skeleton walls extending into an arch enclosing a large, empty space inside like that in Trang An – the rock capital city.

Geological and geomorphologic values:

Trang An, Ninh Binh is located in an area full of historical geological upheavals: bearing unique characteristics in terms of structure and tectonics in the style of a “broken rice pancake”.

Trang An is characterized by a “meshy” network of young isometric non-pronous sinkholes.

The long and wide valley connected with the aged plains in the Southeast parts of the Trang An limestone block is characteristic: They become narrower toward the northwest and extends toward the southeast.

The typical “pulse” neotectonic movements lead to the formation of a “surface balance valley” and “front mountain balance surface.” The three floors of the cave area 10m – 20m, 20m – 30m and 40m – 60m.

Cultural values:

Recently scientists from the Cambridge University (the UK) and the Vietnam Archaeology Institute conducted surveys, research and eight archaeological excavations at Nui Tuong Cave, Oc Cave, vang stone roof, Ong Hay stone roof, Cho stone roof, Trong Cave, Boi Cave and five relics at Hang Pagoda.

The results included many working tools, pottery, and food remains of the ancient people such as animal bones, shells of species of mollusks and crustaceans.

Especially, excavations found human remains in three of six locations. Based on the results of the research, scientists at home and abroad have put forward some initial assessment of the value of the prehistoric culture of the Trang An region.

Trang An pre-historic relics are concentrated in high density, forming different groups in the swampy and follow karst valley. Scientists discovered a relatively intact cultural layer from 1.0m – 2.0m thick, reflecting one or two periods, before, during or after the middle Holocene marine transgression.

The tradition of manipulating limestone objects and using of chiseling tools made from limestone was long maintained.

Pottery appeared early, and was homogeneous in material, pattern, and type among the relics and stayed stable and unified during the long history of the culture of the swampy and hollow valley.

Permanent settlements took place in the caves (2,300 – 3,000 years ago), affected by changing karst valley landscape environment, caused by marine transgression and recession.

Assorted livelihoods were evident along a wide spectrum, with gathering overrunning hunting, planting outdoing animal husbandry, and adaptations to the natural environment.

Trang An landscapes complex boasts outstanding, fascinating and unique values in terms of natural landscapes and preserves the vestiges of natural history, cultural imprints, and many remains of outstanding traditional cultural values of the local communities that are being promoted and conserved.