In the province of Quang Ninh, with the largest port in northern Vietnam, Haiphong, displays Vinh Ha Long Bay, sculpted on the coast when an immense dragon shook its tail. Halong Bay is one of the few places in the world where one can still be lucky enough to recreate the view with the beautiful silhouette of a Chinese sampan sailing from the sun in water that seem torn from a fairy tale and magic millennium.
Probably the most fascinating landscape of Vietnam, a quiet and beautiful bay covers 4000 km2 dotted by more than 1,600 islands and islets of limestone, many of them unnamed. The spectacular rock formations that protrude into the sea and numerous grottoes have created an enchanted world that is alien to the passage of time.
Ha Long means "descending dragon", a name which comes from a local legend. The Jade Emperor ordered a celestial dragon and her offspring that stop an invasion from the sea. The ingenious pieces of jade animals spat that became karst cliffs and beautiful islands, and thus managed to sink enemy ships. According to other versions, the jewels were pearls and the bay was created when the dragon took to sea, dropped tail and shook it hit the earth causing deep valleys and crevasses. It is said that the dragon still lives at the bottom of the bay. All known caves have their own legend. Even the modest limestone reefs are whimsical names by the fishermen, are names like "dogs", "Turtle" or "Sapo", imposed by the extraordinary resemblance of the rock with dolomite forms of these animals.
To visit and stroll around the bay, magical and romantic landscape, where they exist, it is necessary and advisable to take a boat that travels all the islands, and even in one of them, since many are also characterized by their caves and grottoes, some with an emerald green in it (hence the legend of jewelry). The landscape became a World Heritage Site in
1994.
