Hey everyone, welcome to World Heritage Journey.
Today, we're at Trang An Landscape Complex, in Vietnam.
So this is a large limestone karst landscape in the north of Vietnam, not too dissimilar
to Ha Long Bay.
In fact it's sometimes referred to as "Ha Long Bay on land".
Despite the name, the best way to see this place is by boat, and I've heard it's really
spectacular.
So let's check it out!
Trang An is actually a Mixed site, listed for both cultural and natural reasons, but
it's really the landscape that shines here.
It's just magical, with small rivers and streams meandering through rice fields and the astonishing
karst mountains.
The ones here aren't as dramatic as those in Ha Long Bay, but they're still very impressive.
Covered in heavy jungle foliage, you can spot monkeys and other animals frolicking up in
the canopy as you glide past in a rowboat.
One advantage of Trang An is that the landscape is dotted with plenty of little things to
see: temples, pagodas, caves, and underground rivers.
Some of the underground rivers are seriously long - I think the longest we saw was over
three hundred metres!
There's some impressive temples too, and this is where the cultural heritage comes in.
The most important one is the Tran Temple, dating back some 700 years.
We also loved the dolines; areas of the mountains that have collapsed and later filled with
rainwater.
Several of the temples are located in these areas, and there's nothing quite like emerging
from a cave into a self-contained lake at the bottom of a doline!