Tucked away in the north of Vietnam, Ha Giang is a land of fantastic, staggering beauty. Steep, almost conical mountains, caves and grottoes adorn the landscape, where ethnic minority tribes still live and farm in ancient villages. New York Times travel writer Jennifer Bleyer visited the province of Ha Giang recently, with her husband and young daughter in tow. Here's how she described the region: "Such reverence, we soon learned, was warranted, and it wasn’t just because of the region’s spectacular landscape. In an ever-shrinking world, Ha Giang, with its uniquely preserved tribal culture (nearly 90 percent of the population is ethnic minorities), is one of those rare places that hasn’t been corralled by modernity or prepackaged for visitors...During the past two decades, as

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Vietnam has come a long way since the war. Although the Communist party still rules the roost, the country has become increasingly welcoming to foreigners and is now a popular destination for Western tourists. In fact, Gadling's Stanley Stewart recently visited Hanoi and found it to be a wonderful, timeless city: War and communism have preserved Hanoi from fifty years of progress. There are moments when it seems like the lost city of Asia, the one you can never quite find, the great teeming, squalid, fascinating metropolis of Marlene Dietrich films and 1930's novellas. The modern age has transformed Shanghai. Hong Kong and Bangkok are jammed with traffic and skyscrapers. The lanes of Old Peking have given way to boulevards wide enough for tanks. Hanoi alone has retained its street urchin

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