According to NOW, Halong is ranked after the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil but before Iguazu Falls (Argentina and Brazil), South Korea’s Jeju Island, Komodo Island in Indonesia, Puerto Princesca Underground River in the Philippines and South Africa’s Table Mountain.

However, this is only a temporary result based on the number of votes as of last Friday. Accordingly, the organization plans to officially announce the final result early next year, warning there may be changes among the seven aforementioned winners.

After four years of fierce competition with over 200 candidates, Quang Ninh Province’s magical tourist attraction finally enters the provisional list.

According to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), the final days of the vote was a flurry of activity as the number of people checking out NOW’s website sharply increased. Also, the number of mobile messages in the days close to Friday’s deadline rose to 1,500,000 a day compared to early October when only 150,000 were recorded.

There were over 24 million mobile messages voting for Halong via the 147 switchboard as of 6:11 p.m. last Friday, said Tran Nhat Hoang of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

Thanks to such efforts, Halong has succeeded in remaining in the top ten of the 28 candidates in the final round. This is a great chance for the local tourism industry to develop Halong into a national brand name to attract international visitors to Vietnam.

Covering an area of 1,553 square kilometers in Quang Ninh Province, Halong has a 120-kilometer-long beach and thousands of limestone areas along with 1,969 small islets.

Some islets have large caves while others are home to fishermen who live on floating villages. There are numerous lakes inside the limestone islands; Dau Be Island has six lakes.

UNESCO has twice recognized Halong as a world natural heritage, for the first time in 1994 for its scenic value and six years later for its unique geology and geomorphology.

Since NOW’s launch to vote for the seven new wonders of the world on July 17 in 2007, millions of supporters from all over the world have voted for Halong through www.new7wonders.com as well as by SMS.