Motorcycling in Vietnam

A Pa Chai is Vietnam's westernmost point - a remote peak in Điện Biên province where Vietnam, Laos, and China meet at a tri-border marker, reached by a full-day trek through the forest of Mường Nhé district.

Angel Eye Mountain - also known as God Eye Mountain or Núi Thủng - is a limestone karst peak in Cao Bằng with a perfectly circular 50m hole piercing through its summit, set in the Thang Hen valley where the surrounding flatland floods into a 15-hectare lake each rainy season.

Bắc Sơn Valley in Lạng Sơn is one of northern Vietnam's most photogenic and least-visited landscapes - a wide flat basin of patchwork rice paddies ringed by dramatic limestone karst peaks, populated by Tày and Nùng ethnic minority villages that have changed little in generations.

Bình Liêu in Quảng Ninh province is a highland border district where terraced rice paddies and sweeping reed grass fields meet the Chinese frontier - home to Dao, Tày, and Sán Chỉ ethnic minority communities, and one of northern Vietnam's most beautiful and overlooked autumn landscapes.

Bình Sơn Beach in Ninh Thuận is a stretch of undeveloped coastline north of Phan Rang with clear water and a fishing community backdrop - in a province that gets less rain than anywhere else in Vietnam and has some of the most reliably sunny beaches on the south-central coast.

Cape Cà Ná is a dramatic headland on the Ninh Thuận coast where granite boulders meet the East Sea against a backdrop of near-desert scrubland - one of the most visually distinctive coastal landscapes on the north-south motorbike route.

Cù Mi Beach is a largely undeveloped stretch of coastline in Hàm Tân district, Bình Thuận - a quiet fishing community beach that sits between the resort development of Mũi Né to the north and the emerging coast of Hồ Tràm to the south.

Đa Ploa Stream in Đạ Huoai district of Lâm Đồng is a remote multi-tier Stream in the transitional forest zone between the southern highlands and the lowlands - visited almost exclusively by Vietnamese travelers and largely absent from foreign-language travel content.

The Hmong King Palace in Đồng Văn is the former residence of the Vương clan - the most powerful Hmong family in colonial Indochina - a remarkable stone compound built between 1919 and 1928 that blends Chinese, French, and Hmong architectural traditions in the heart of the Ha Giang plateau.

Hòn Sơn is a mountainous island in the Gulf of Thailand, Kiên Giang province - larger and more scenic than most of the province's outer islands, with clear water, hill trails, fishing communities, and almost no resort development.

Khau Cóc Chà Pass is one of the most dramatic mountain roads in Cao Bằng - a high-altitude route through cloud forest connecting Nguyên Bình to the Phia Oắc massif, with sweeping views over the southern Cao Bằng plateau and valley systems that rival anything on the Ha Giang Loop.

Khau Phạ Pass is one of Vietnam's four great mountain passes - a 30km road through the clouds between Tú Lệ and Mù Cang Chải, with the most dramatic views of rice terraces in the country cascading down both sides of the valley below.

Lũng Pô in A Mú Sung commune, Bát Xát district is where the Red River first crosses into Vietnam from China - marked by border marker 92 and a 31.43m flagpole built in 2017. Remote and emotionally resonant, especially in March when kapok trees blaze red along the riverbank.

Mã Pí Lèng Pass - Vietnam's most dramatic mountain road, a 20km switchback carved into sheer limestone cliffs above the turquoise Nho Quế River canyon, 1,500m below.

Masara Hill in Đức Trọng district, Lâm Đồng is a 30-hectare expanse of open grassland that turns pink from mid-November to mid-December - one of the few places in Vietnam where this seasonal transformation happens at scale, and largely unknown to foreign visitors.

Mẫu Sơn is one of the few places in Vietnam where snow falls - a 1,541m massif in Lạng Sơn province near the Chinese border that experiences genuine subalpine conditions in winter, with frost, occasional snowfall, and a sea of clouds that makes it one of the most dramatic landscapes in the northeast.

The Moc Chau Tea Hills are vast rolling plantations of trimmed green tea bushes covering the highland plateau of Son La province - one of the most photogenic agricultural landscapes in northern Vietnam, especially at dawn when mist fills the valleys between the rows.

Mũi Điện (Cape Varella) in Phú Yên is a dramatic 110-metre headland crowned by a working lighthouse - widely regarded as the easternmost accessible point of mainland Vietnam, and the place where the country's coastline makes its sharpest turn from the South China Sea.

O Quy Ho Pass is Vietnam's longest and highest mountain pass at 2,090m, crossing the Hoàng Liên Son range between Sapa and Lai Chau on a 50km stretch of road that descends through cloud forest, rice terrace valleys, and one of the most dramatic mountain landscapes in Southeast Asia.

Cầu Ông Cọp is Vietnam's longest wooden bridge - an 800-meter hand-built structure of timber and bamboo spanning the Bình Bá river in Phú Yên. Built by locals in 1998 and rebuilt after every flood season, it became famous as a filming location for the 2015 Vietnamese film 'Yellow Flowers on the Green Grass' and is now one of Phú Yên's most photographed landmarks.

Phi Liêng Waterfall is a remote multi-tier waterfall in Đam Rông district of Lâm Đồng - deep in the forest north of Đà Lạt, far from the tourist circuit, with a wide base pool suitable for swimming and an approach through highland forest and K'Ho community villages.

Phuoc Binh Beach is a 4km stretch of quiet coastline near Phuoc Tinh fishing village between Long Hai and Ho Tram, a broad shallow beach where local fishermen land their boats each morning and foreign travelers rarely stop.

Quản Bạ Heaven Gate is the first dramatic viewpoint on the Ha Giang Loop - a mountain pass at 1,500 metres where the road crests and the entire Quản Bạ Valley opens below, with the Twin Mountains rising from the valley floor and, in the right season, a sea of clouds filling the basin at dawn.

The Quản Bạ Twin Mountains - Núi Đôi, 'Double Mountains' - are two symmetrical limestone peaks rising from the Quản Bạ Valley floor, an icon of the Ha Giang Loop and the subject of a Tày legend about a fairy who left her twin children behind when she was called back to heaven.

Sơn Trà Peninsula is Đà Nẵng's wild backyard - a 4,400-hectare nature reserve of dense jungle rising directly from the sea, home to one of Vietnam's last populations of the endangered red-shanked douc langur, and connected to the city by a scenic coastal road.

Ta Pa Fields are a landscape of traditional floating rice paddies in the Seven Mountains region of An Giang province, submerged each flood season when the Mekong Delta rises. The combination of water-covered fields, distant mountain silhouettes, and Khmer stilt village architecture makes it one of the most distinctive seasonal landscapes in southern Vietnam.

Thẩm Mã Pass - a lesser-known but stunning mountain pass on the Hà Giang Loop between Yên Minh and Đồng Văn, with sweeping views over terraced valleys and karst peaks that rival the more famous passes.

Thung Khe Pass (Đèo Đá Trắng / White Rock Pass) on National Highway 6 in Hòa Bình province sits at 1,000m above sea level with sweeping views of Mai Chau valley, dramatic white limestone cliffs, and a small Mường ethnic market at the summit. A mandatory stop on any Hanoi–Mai Chau motorbike route.

Vĩnh Trung Fields in Tịnh Biên district stretch across the flatlands beneath the Thất Sơn mountain range - a pastoral landscape of rice paddies, Khmer pagodas, and water buffalo with the dramatic profile of Núi Cấm rising from the plain.

The Yên Minh Pine Forest is an unexpected stretch of highland pine on the Ha Giang Loop between Quản Bạ and Đồng Văn - a 10km section of road through dense Pinus kesiya forest at 1,200 metres, with morning mist threading between the trees and a completely different atmosphere from the surrounding karst landscape.