On July 27, 2026, the Vietnamese paper Tuoi Tre reported that five places in Vietnam had been nominated for the UN Tourism 'Best Tourism Villages 2026.' Leading the headline was Mang Den Treehouse (Quang Ngai province), with rooms set atop old tree trunks and tall wooden posts. First to grasp is that this is not an award but aAt the application and candidate stage, and the results are expected to be announced in the fourth quarter of 2026. What matters in practice for Japanese readers lies elsewhere. Three of the five sites had their province names change in the July 2025 provincial mergers, and searching now turns up substantial information only under the old names.
Mang Den's treehouse lodge, built around old trees rather than cutting them down
According to Tuổi Trẻ, what defines Măng Đen Treehouse is a cluster of guest rooms built to hide beneath the canopy. Rather than felling trees to clear flat ground for construction, they built while leaving the trees standing. As a result, some buildings have trees growing up through them and out past the roof. The paper explains it as a design that doesn't separate the buildings from the forest.
Experiences beyond lodging that the original lists include ziplining, a canopy skywalk, trekking, cycling, camping, meditation and reading. It's built for people who want to spend time quietly but find doing nothing unsatisfying. The Vietnam National Authority of Tourism positions the site as combining architectural ingenuity, stays and nature experiences, with a Mang Den–specificTourism products—the article assesses that it has become just that.
The administrative side was settled first. On August 21, 2025, the Quang Ngai Province People's Committee issued a decision recognizing Mang Den Treehouse as a tourist site (diem du lich). Its address is 1 Su Van Hanh Street, Mang Den commune, Quang Ngai Province. This nomination, Tuoi Tre writes, is a chance to spread a green tourism model -- building while keeping the forest -- to travelers at home and abroad. A plan to make the wider Mang Den area a national-level ecotourism zone is in motion, but as of July 2026 no formal designation as a national tourism zone can be confirmed. The original gives no lodging rates or booking method.
A nomination isn't a win; reading it from the past two years' announcement scale
Best Tourism Villages is an award for rural tourism that the UN Tourism agency selects each year, judged on preservation of traditional culture, environmental protection, community value, and sustainability. Vietnam's five sites this time are its list of entries—they haven't won anything yet.
You can gauge the scale by the past two years' numbers. In 2025 the announcement came on October 17 in Huzhou, China, where 52 places were selected from over 270 entries across 65 member countries. Adding 20 places in a separate upgrade program, 72 joined the network, bringing the cumulative total to 319. In 2024 the announcement was in Cartagena, Colombia in November, with 55 places chosen from over 260 entries across more than 60 countries.
Vietnam's track record totals five sites: Thai Hai (Thai Nguyen) in 2022, Thanh Hoa in 2023, Tra Que (Hoi An) in 2024, and Lo Lo Chai (Tuyen Quang) and Quynh Son (Lang Son) in 2025. Only one or two got through in a given year; it's not a structure where submitting five means five win. Until the fourth-quarter announcement, it's safer to keep candidates and winners clearly separate.
Why 'a fishing village in Dak Lak' makes sense
The five places announced by the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism are Lo village (Dak Lak Province), Cat Cat Community Tourism Village (Lao Cai Province), Bay Mau coconut forest in Cam Thanh (Da Nang), Mang Den Treehouse (Quang Ngai Province) and Phu Lien Community Tourism Village (Lang Son Province). If your knowledge of the map is out of date, you'll misread things here.
Dak Lak Province is known for its face as a coffee highland, but Long Village is a coastal fishing village. Under a provincial merger effective July 1, 2025, Phu Yen Province was merged into Dak Lak Province, and Long Village in the former Phu Yen's Hoa Hiep ward became “the Dak Lak with a coast.” In the same reorganization, Quang Nam Province was absorbed into Da Nang City and Kon Tum Province into Quang Ngai Province. It's quickest to read Bay Mau coconut forest as effectively Hoi An, and Măng Đen as effectively the Kon Tum highlands.
This bears directly on planning a trip. Information on lodging, buses and tours is still overwhelmingly thicker on pages written with the old province names. Searching 'Kon Tum Măng Đen' rather than 'the highlands of Quang Ngai,' or 'Hội An Cẩm Thanh' rather than 'Da Nang's palm groves,' gets you there faster. The problem of renaming overwriting a place's description has in some cases been filled by younger generations remaking the content (The summer 100 students turned a fading craft village into ”emo heritage” through social media）。
Re-listing the five sites by old name, current name and substance
| Nominated site | Current location | Before the merger | Contents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lò village (làng Lò) | Hoa Hiep ward, Dak Lak province | Formerly Phu Yen Province | A seaside fishing village with red-tile roofs. 72 lodgings, 459 rooms |
| Cat Cat village | Lao Cai Province (Sapa) | No change | A Mong community tourism village |
| Bay Mau coconut forest, Cam Thanh | Da Nang City | Hoi An, former Quang Nam Province | An area where palms grow thick along the waterways. Rides in basket boats (thúng chai) |
| Mang Den Treehouse | Mang Den commune, Quang Ngai province | Formerly Kon Tum Province | Treetop rooms and forest activities. Certified as a tourist site by the province in 2025 |
| Phu Lien Village | Lang Son province | No change | A Thai and Dao community tourism village next to the Dong Lam grassland |
Who frames it, and how
The Vietnam National Authority of Tourism describes Mang Den Treehouse's approach as a mix of architecture, stay and nature experience, praising how houses skillfully built amid the green forest create a tourism product unique to Mang Den. On the administrative side, the Quang Ngai Provincial People's Committee, ahead of the recommendation, issued a decision dated August 21, 2025 certifying the facility as a tourist site.
Tuổi Trẻ, which reported it, writes that this selection is a chance to spread Măng Đen's green tourism model to travelers at home and abroad. The English edition of state radio VOV also reported the same five sites, giving the announcement of results as the fourth quarter of 2026.
The selecting body, UN Tourism, published its 2025 announcement under the frame of '52 communities driving rural development.' It's a system that evaluates nine areas, including infrastructure and transport links, cultural and natural resources, and environmental sustainability — not a contest judging a settlement's looks alone.
Right now, before the announcement, is when you can walk it most quietly
The few months of being just a nominee suit anyone planning a trip. Winning changes neither how you get there nor the admission fee -- only the exposure. And all five sites here have small capacity. Lo village has 72 lodgings and 459 rooms, Phu Lien offers homestays in the village's stilt houses, and Mang Den has treetop rooms -- scales that fall apart if groups descend all at once. Moving before the fourth-quarter announcement lets you have the same experience in peace.
The change in the lineup is also worth noting. Four of the five places are settlements themselves or community-run tourism villages, but Mang Den Treehouse alone is a commercial facility run by a single operator, and it only received the province's tourist-site certification in 2025. Into the frame of "village," rather than a historic settlement,Lodging built into the forest after the factis starting to enter. The banner of rural tourism, it also shows, can be won by the way you preserve a forest, even without centuries of pedigree. Village tourism staying in a toddy-palm forest deep in the Mekong (Staying in a toddy-palm forest: village tourism in Bay Nui, deep in the Mekong) shows that even for the same rural stay, the design philosophies are utterly different.
Seen from the food-and-farming side, Lo village's positioning carries weight. It's a fishing village where anchovy fish-sauce making, net weaving, and seafood processing survive as livelihoods, and the judging includes contribution to the local economy and the SDGs. For Japanese food businesses looking to partner with a production area, this nomination list works as a short list of 'sourcing regions you can explain to outsiders.' Around Mang Den there are also places like Kon Ka Kinh that have begun opening protected forests to tourism (A forest where you can meet endangered monkeys: Kon Ka Kinh, Gia Lai's new destination), the Central Highlands is leaning toward selling its forests as a resource.
Lang Son and Da Nang have put forward a “second”
Follow each province's moves and you see how this award gets used. Lang Son province, after winning with Quynh Son in 2025, put forward Huu Lien for 2026. It turns a first win into an application for a second.
Da Nang is clearer still. Tra Que, which won in 2024, is a vegetable village in Hoi An, formerly Quang Nam province, and became Da Nang's credit through the 2025 merger. That same Da Nang has nominated Cam Thanh's Bay Mau coconut grove, within the same Hoi An area, for 2026. A city that inherited a winning site through a provincial merger puts forward one more neighboring settlement. This year's nomination list reads as using the award not as a one-off honor but as a framework to roll out across the area.
Getting there and costs (converted at 1 yen = about 162 dong)
| Location | Access at a glance | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Mang Den Treehouse | 1 Su Van Hanh Street, Mang Den commune, Quang Ngai Province. About 100–130 km from Pleiku Airport, roughly 2–2.5 hours by car | Room rates and how to book aren't stated in the original. Check with the property directly |
| Cat Cat village | Sapa, Lao Cai province | Adults 150,000 dong (about 930 yen) / children 1–1.4 m tall 70,000 dong (about 430 yen) / under 1 m free |
| Bay Mau coconut forest, Cam Thanh | Cam Thanh, Da Nang (on the outskirts of Hoi An's old town) | Admission 30,000 dong (about 190 yen) plus a boat-shaped basket 200,000 dong per craft (about 1,230 yen, 2 people) |
| Phu Lien Village and the Dong Lam grasslands | Huu Lien commune, Lang Son province. About 120–150 km from Hanoi (varies by source) | Stilt-house homestays available (no unified published rate could be confirmed) |
| Lo village | Along the coast in Hoa Hiep ward, Dak Lak Province. Three areas, Lo 1 to 3 | 72 lodging establishments, 459 rooms |
Mang Den is a highland at roughly 1,200 m elevation, and its selling point is a cool 18–22°C year-round. The nearest air gateway is Pleiku Airport, from which you drive up the mountains. It's not a day trip from Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, so plan on two nights.
Summary
It comes down to three things. First, don't conflate candidates with winners—in reporting or internal notes, write "nominated" or "candidate" until the fourth-quarter 2026 announcement. Second, when researching the five sites, search old province names too; just adding the words Phu Yen, Quang Nam and Kon Tum changes how much transport and lodging information turns up. Third, if you're going, lock in dates before the announcement—these are all places with lodging totaling from the low tens to the low hundreds, and once they're talked about, the options vanish.
Mang Den in particular is at its best in the crisp dry-season mornings outside the rainy season, and a three-day, two-night trip that includes travel time from Pleiku is realistic. Even when using a travel agency, saying 'Kon Tum Mang Den' gets an itinerary out faster.
Sources:Tuổi Trẻ／Tuổi Trẻ（làng Lò）／VOV World／UN Tourism／Vietnam National Authority of Tourism／VnExpress／VietnamPlus／Hoa Hiep Ward People's Committee／Mia.vn／VinWonders
