Ha Long Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and popular travel destination in Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam. The name Hạ Long means "descending dragon". Administratively, the bay belongs to Ha Long City, Cam Pha City, and is a part of Van Don District. The bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various shapes and sizes. Ha Long Bay is a center of a larger zone which includes Bai Tu Long Bay to the northeast, and Cat Ba Islandto the southwest. These larger zones share a similar geological, geographical, geomorphological, climate, and cultural characters.
Ha Long Bay has an area of around 1,553 km2 (600 sq mi), including 1,960–2,000 islets, most of which are limestone. The core of the bay has an area of 334 km2 (129 sq mi) 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 evergreenbiosystem, oceanic and sea shore biosystem. Ha Long Bay is home to 14 endemic floral species and 60 endemic faunal species.
Location.
Ha Long Bay is located in northeastern Vietnam, from E106°55' to E107°37' and from N20°43' to N21°09'. The bay stretches from Quang Yen town, past Ha Long city, Cam Pha city town to Van Don district, bordered on the south and southeast by Lan Ha Bay, on the north by Ha Long city, and on the west by Bai Tu Long Bay. The bay has a 120-kilometre-long (75 mi) coastline and is approximately 1,553 km2 (600 sq mi) in size with about 2,000 islets. The area designated by UNESCO as the World Natural Heritage Site incorporates 434 km2 (168 sq mi) with 775 islets, of which the core zone is delimited by 69 points: Dau Go island on the west, Ba Ham lake on the south and Cong Tay island on the east. The protected area is from the Cái Dăm petrol store to Quang Hanh ward, Cam Pha city and the surrounding zone.
Climate.
The climate of the bay is tropical, wet, sea islands, with two seasons: hot and moist summer, and dry and cold winter. The average temperature is from 15–25 °C (59–77 °F), and annual rainfall is between 2 and 2.2 metres (6.6 and 7.2 ft). Ha Long Bay has the typical diurnal tide system (tide amplitude ranges from 3.5–4 metres or 11–13 feet). The salinity is from 31 to 34.5MT in the dry season and lower in the rainy season.
History of tectonics.
Ha Long Bay has experienced at least 500 million years in various geological states of orogeny, marine transgression and marine regression. During the Ordovician and Silurianperiods (500-410 million years ago), Ha Long Bay was deep sea. During the Carboniferous and Permian periods (340-250 million years ago), Ha Long Bay was at shallow sea level.
The dominated uplift movement of neotectonic and recent tectonic influenced deeply on topography of this area, and the present landscape of sea-islands was formed around 7 or 8 thousand years ago by the sea invasion during Holocene transgression begun at about 17-18 thousand years ago. Particularly from the Holocene time, from about 11,000 years ago Cat Ba - Ha Long area has much archaeological evidence connecting variations in sea levels with the development of ancient cultures such as the Soi Nhu and Ha Long cultures.
Karst geomorphology value
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.
Location and History
Hoa Lu, the capital of Dai Co Viet (an old name of Vietnam) under the Dinh and Le dynastiesbears with it a legend. Being the capital of the first fundamental Government of Vietnam, Hoa Lu witnessed many important historical events: the union of Vietnam after “12 Lords Rebellion”, the war with the Song dynasty, the defense against the ancient Cambodian, and the formation of Hanoi nowadays. With the total size of 13.87 square kilometers, Hoa Lu old capital is an attractive place that history lovers should not miss out.
Bái Đính Temple Spiritual and Cultural Complex is a complex of Buddhist temples on Bai Dinh Mountain in Gia Viễn District, Ninh Bình Province, Vietnam. The compound consists of the original old temple and a newly created larger temple. It is considered the largest complex of Buddhist temples in Vietnam and has become a popular site for Buddhist pilgrimages from across Vietnam.
Bai Đinh Temple, along with Phát Diệm Cathedral, Hoa Lư Ancient Capital Tam Cốc-Bích Động, Trang An, Cúc Phương is a famous tourist attraction site of Ninh Bình Province.
The New Bai Đính Temple (Bái Đính Tân Tự) encompasses an area of 700 hectares, located on Ba Rau hills, near the Hoang Long River. This is a large complex which includes many structures built over several phases starting in 2003 and finally completed in 2010 The temple's architecture follows traditional lines, consisting of large halls, courtyards and enclosures. The huge scale of Bai Dinh makes it strikingly different from previously built Vietnamese Buddhist pagodas, however. The largest structure, the Tam Thế Hall, rises to 34 m at its roof ridge and measures over 59 m in length. The construction materials include locally quarried stone and timber from Ninh Bình and tiles from Bát Tràng (reinforced concrete was also employed owing to the scale of construction). The temple adheres to traditional Vietnamese design aesthetics with its curve finials and corner eaves soaring outward and upward, resembling a phoenix's tail. Artisanal works from local handicraft villages were selected for the interior, with bronze sculptures from Ý Yên, stone carvings from Ninh Van, wood carpentry from Phú Lộc, and embroidery from Ninh Hải.
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