Northeastern Highlands Vietnam trip

This is Vietnam's last true frontier. While Sapa has the terraces and the lodges and the well-worn paths, the northeast offers something rawer – a landscape that still feels like a secret, where the roads themselves are the attraction and every bend reveals another valley you didn't know existed. The Ha Giang loop is the headline act: a two-to-three day circuit through the Dong Van Karst Plateau, where limestone towers erupt from green valleys and the road clings to mountainsides with cheerful disregard for vertigo. Ba Be National Park offers a gentler counterpoint – still water, jungle, and wooden homestays on the lake. This is H'mong, Tay, Dao, and Lo Lo country. The markets are real, the villages are working communities, and the tourism infrastructure is still catching up with the scenery. It asks a bit more of you and gives more back.