Ha Giang, Hoi An among world's most beautiful places: Time Out

Updated: 10:10, 14/05/2025

The northern mountainous province of Ha Giang and Hoi An city in the central province of Quang Nam have been ranked among the 44 most beautiful places in the world by U.K.-based travel magazine Time Out.

The magazine ranked Ha Giang in tenth place, saying the winding mountain passes, terraced rice paddies and 43 different ethnic groups that call this place home, all combine to give Ha Giang its otherworldly air.

Tham Ma Pass in Ha Giang province is an obvious pull, winding its way through six successive hairpin bends.

According to Time Out, Tham Ma Pass is an obvious pull, winding its way through six successive hairpin bends, while the Ma Pi Leng Pass carves a mountain edge, overlooking the Nho Que River 3000 feet below.

"However, my personal favorite vista in Ha Giang affords a different kind of beauty, the kind to confront you with your own teeny-tiny mortality.

In La Si and its surrounding region you'll glimpse mountain after mountain, as far as the eye can see, of terraced rice paddies. It's taken thousands (yes thousands) of years of hard toil to tame these mountains into the rice producing expanse that it is today," wrote the magazine.

Time Out describes that life in Hoi An moves like molasses – slow and sweet.

"When I lived in this dreamy little community, I spent mornings sipping coconut coffee in cafes and afternoons biking through swaying rice paddies past grazing buffalo. Now, I spend a few months a year here, watching lantern-lit boats glide along the Thu Bon River, cycling through Old Town before the evening crowds gather, and lounging on one of Vietnam's most beautiful beaches", a writer for the magazine noted.

Nearly 7.7 million foreign arrivals traveled to Vietnam in the first four months of this year, a year-on-year increase of 23%, the National Statistics Office reported.