The most spectacular waterfall in Southeast Asia — a 300m-wide cascade on the Chinese border in the Cao Bang limestone karst, surrounded by rice paddies and accessible by bamboo raft
Ban Gioc (Vietnamese: Thác Bản Giốc — 'the waterfall of Ban Gioc village') is the largest waterfall in Vietnam and the fourth-largest waterfall in the world located on an international border — the waterfall straddles the border between Cao Bang Province in northeastern Vietnam and Guangxi Province in China, with approximately two-thirds of the falls on the Chinese side (where it is known as Detian Falls, 德天瀑布). The waterfall consists of three distinct tiers of cascades spreading over 300m of width, falling a total of 70m over limestone terracing, with the river (the Quay Son, a tributary of…
The Cao Bang Province region was the scene of one of the most significant campaigns of the First Indochina War (1946-1954): the Battle of Route Coloniale 4 (1950) in which the Viet Minh forces of General Giap ambushed and destroyed a column of French forces retreating from the Cao Bang garrison, resulting in the largest French military defeat in the war to that point and precipitating the French decision to seek American financial support. The Cao Bang area's connection to Marxist revolutionary history extends further: the Pac Bo Cave (60km northeast of Cao Bang, a well-maintained heritage si…