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26/2/10 - Ba Be National Park is 240km northwest of Hanoi, it takes about 6 hours to drive there along a mixture of highway and then windy back roads. The countryside along the way is hilly and the roads were lined with a lot of school kids on bicycles. The country was dryer than that around Cuc Phuong and there had been a drought in the area over recent times.

Many of the towns we passed through were dusty, frontier places. The eatery that we stopped at for lunch had enough Vodka stockpiled in boxes to keep half of Russia happy. Some folks around towns like Bak Kan obviously had big drinking problems.

The Ba Be Lake in the northern province of Bac Kan.

Vietnam will apply for the inscription of the Ba Be National Park on the Ramsar List of Westlands of International Importance, the government said Saturday.

Representatives from six northern mountainous provinces gathered in Tuyen Quang province on Nov. 21 to discuss how to tap their potential in tourism.

The provinces, which in the past formed the famous revolutionary base of Viet Bac, boast many beautiful sceneries, diverse ecological systems and culture as well as rich historical relics, Nguyen Van Tuan, Director of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, said at the workshop on tourism development.

Highlights: Hanoi – Thai Nguyen – Ba Be (Bac Kan) – Cao Bang – Ban Gioc – Hanoi – Ha Long.
Duration: 9 days/ 8 nights
Trip start: Hanoi  
Trip end: Hanoi  
Tour type: Adventure Tours, Cruise Tours

Ba Be - Vietnam's largest natural lake

Ba Be is Vietnam’s largest natural lake and is now the centerpiece of an extensive National Park.

The park and the surrounding area is limestone country, so lakes, waterfalls, caves and unusual rock formations abound. The whole area is richly forested and home to many ethnic minority communities.