Ha Long

The bay has been used for far longer than the city. Archaeologists trace the Hạ Long culture of coastal fishing and pottery communities here from several thousand years ago, and the nearby Bạch Đằng River, where Vietnamese forces more than once destroyed invading fleets with stakes driven into the riverbed, is part of the same seascape. For centuries these islands sheltered fishing villages and, at times, pirates preying on the trade route into the Red River Delta.

The modern town was made by coal. Quảng Ninh's seams outcrop close to the surface along this shore, and French companies opened large mines at Hòn Gai and Cẩm Phả from the 1880s, building quays, a railway and workers' quarters. Mining shaped the politics of the province as much as its landscape: the coal miners' strikes under French rule are remembered as a landmark in the Vietnamese labour movement, and the area became a centre of anti-colonial organisation.

Hòn Gai became the capital of the new province of Quảng Ninh in 1963, and in 1993 it was merged with Bãi Cháy to form the city of Hạ Long. Ha Long Bay was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site the following year, and listed a second time in 2000 for its geology. Tourism grew quickly after that, first for Vietnamese visitors and then for foreign ones, and Bãi Cháy filled with hotels. The Bãi Cháy Bridge replaced the ferry across the harbour in 2006, and the expressway from Hanoi cut the journey from the capital to a fraction of what it had been. At the end of 2019 the city absorbed the rural district of Hoành Bồ to the north, greatly enlarging its area.

Ha Long has two identities that sit awkwardly together. One belongs to the coal province: a workforce with a strong trade-union tradition, mining families who have lived here for generations, and a provincial pride in having supplied the country's fuel. Miners' culture is visible in the monuments, the museum's displays and the streets of company housing in the eastern wards, and the annual miners' traditions are marked more seriously here than anywhere else in Vietnam.

The other identity is the resort, which arrived within living memory and now dominates the western shore. It brings a seasonal rhythm of Vietnamese family holidays in summer, foreign cruise passengers in the shoulder months, karaoke bars, souvenir shops and a service economy that draws young workers from inland provinces.

Older custom runs underneath both. Fishing households keep shrines to the sea and to whales, whose strandings are traditionally honoured on this coast, and spring is a season of temple festivals — at Cửa Ông above Cẩm Phả, and on Yên Tử inland, where the Trúc Lâm Zen tradition founded by King Trần Nhân Tông draws pilgrims from across the country. The floating villages that once housed thousands of people among the islands have largely been resettled ashore, and their former life is now presented to visitors rather than lived.

About 270,000 people were counted in the city at the 2019 census, and it stretches for tens of kilometres along the shore and, since 2019, far inland. Coal remains a major employer, with open-cast and underground workings, power stations and port terminals to the east, while tourism, hotels, boat crews, construction and provincial government provide most of the rest of the work.

The two halves live differently. Bãi Cháy runs on the visitor season: hotel shifts, boat departures at mid-morning, restaurants filling at dusk, and a quiet emptiness in the wet, grey weeks of late winter. Hòn Gai keeps ordinary urban life — the market at dawn, schools, offices, shipyards and the fish quay — and is where most residents actually live.

Fishing continues on a smaller scale than before, constrained by conservation rules in the World Heritage area, and aquaculture rafts raise oysters and fish in sheltered channels. The pressure of growth is the running issue: water quality and litter in the bay, the number of boats licensed to sail, hotel building along the shore, and the balance between mining revenue and the landscape that draws visitors. New apartment towers and reclaimed waterfront land have changed the skyline sharply in the past decade.

This is a seafood city, and its signature dish is chả mực: squid pounded by hand rather than minced, mixed with black pepper and dill, formed into patties and fried. It is eaten with sticky rice, with plain rice, or tucked into bánh cuốn, and is sold in vacuum packs to take home. The quality of the squid and the hand-pounding are what local cooks argue about.

The rest of the repertoire comes off the same boats. Ngán, a mud clam from the tidal flats, is grilled over charcoal, steamed with ginger or infused into rice wine. Sá sùng, a sandworm gathered on the flats at Vân Đồn and Quảng Yên, is dried and used to deepen noodle broths, and commands high prices. Bề bề, mantis shrimp, appear steamed or in a noodle soup; crab, sea snails, razor clams and oysters from the bay rafts fill the tanks along the promenade. Horseshoe crab, sam biển, is a speciality of the Quảng Yên area nearby and is treated as a delicacy.

Everyday eating follows the northern pattern: phở and bánh cuốn for breakfast, rice with fish and vegetables at lunch, bia hơi at pavement tables in the evening. Quảng Ninh also produces bánh gật gù, a soft rolled rice sheet from Tiên Yên eaten with a rich pork dipping sauce, and the province's fish sauce and dried seafood are common gifts to take back to Hanoi.