Ma Pi Leng Pass is located between Dong Van and Meo Vac Districts, along National Road No. 4C in Ha Giang. It is about 16 kilometers from Meo Vac. Meaning “Horse nose bridge” in the Hmong language, it is considered, indeed, a breathtaking sight.

The National Road No. 4C – Dong Van – Meo Vac route is historical in itself, built after North Vietnam was free from French rule. It is about 300 kilometers long which took 6 years to construct (1959-1965), 2 million work days and labored by young people from 16 nations and 8 provinces of North Vietnam such as Cao Bang, Lang Son, Thai Nguyen, Tuyen Quang and Ha Giang. It was such a challenge building the road that the time it was finished was a day of rejoicing for everyone. Thus, it's also called “The Happiness Road.”

But the construction of Ma Pi Leng Pass is considered to be the most unforgettable, being the most difficult to make. It took one and a half years to connect the towns of Dong Van and Meo Vac, a total of 24 kilometers. Ma Pi Leng Pass itself took over 11 months or 330 days to make. To make it even harder, workers had to hang themselves on rock cliffs to build the pass. But as difficult as it was to build Ma Pi Leng, it is also the most spectacular pass, if not, view, in the whole country.

Ma Pi Leng Pass has earned so much recognition that even literature has different claims to the famous structure. It is argued to be Mau Pi Leng instead of its known name, to mean the feeling of a mouse when it is to be devoured by a cat. But whatever is true of both names, the main idea is to describe the “dangerous, breathaking” feeling of travelling through the pass. Passing through Ma Pi Leng gives one an amazing sight of nature with the Nho Que River, a beautiful, deep canyon below it, a multitude of mountains, steep cliffs and rock deserts all throughout.

While Ma Pi Leng Pass is already rich in history and landscape, it is also geologically-significant. Faulting, folding, karstification, stratigraphic type sections, stratigraphic unconformities, chrono-stratigraphic boundaries and different kinds of both karst and non-karst landforms, are just some of the geo-heritage facts that the pass offers. And all these important information are fed to tourists on a stopover station specifically built to allow visitors to enjoy the beauty of Ma Ling Le Pass and the surrounding view.

At present, Ma Ling Le Pass is being processed to be recognized as a “national-historic-cultural landscape” relic along with its geological values.