Dong Van Karst Plateau & Old Town on the Ha Giang Loop
A visual guide from the Ha Giang travel guide — see all posters in Visual Guides.
The upper half of the loop rides across the Dong Van Karst Plateau, a UNESCO Global Geopark — Vietnam's first — where grey limestone teeth erupt from every field and maize somehow grows out of bare rock. At its heart sits Dong Van town, the loop's favourite overnight stop, with a small old quarter of century-old stone-and-timber houses that glows with lanterns after dark.
The Karst Plateau
The geopark's limestone was laid down as seabed hundreds of millions of years ago, and the plateau is signed with geo-sites explaining its folds and fossils — but the human landscape is the real show: H'mong farmhouses behind stacked stone walls, hemp and maize in rock pockets, and villages like Sung La and Pho Bang tucked into hollows. The Vuong family palace at Sa Phin, the 'H'mong King's' fortified mansion, makes an easy stop en route.
The Old Quarter & the Sunday Market
Dong Van's old quarter is compact — a market square and a few lanes of old houses, some now cafes where you drink coffee under blackened beams. Come Sunday morning the town swells for the weekly market, one of the plateau's biggest: livestock, indigo cloth, herbs and great vats of thang co simmering, with villagers walking in from hours away. Markets rotate around the district, so ask your homestay what falls on your dates.