Caves are my thing – I love them and think they’re incredibly cool. Rorie knew this, so he was excited to stumble upon Phong Nha, a huge national park and area with some of the most incredible caves in the world, while doing research on sites to visit in Vietnam. After only a 4-hour bus from Hue, we arrived in the small village of Phong Nha, which is essentially one street lined with hostels, guesthouses, and a few restaurants. [Editor’s note: Interestingly, we spoke to people who said that as of 5-10 years ago not even this tiny stretch of humanity existed in the area. As they’ve begun discovering these caves and their popularity as a tourist attraction is growing, the village is rapidly expanding to take advantage. It’s particularly interesting since it feels like so much of the rest of Vietnam is well-travelled, yet this somehow slipped under the radar and became an undiscovered gem. This meant that while there were definitely backpackers around, the social scene paled compared with all the other spots we visited in the city. Lucky us!]
The village of Phong Nha was the base for our four days in Phong Nha, which is more than most people spend (again, did I mention that I love caves?), which involved spending our first day visiting two of the caves as a day trip, doing a two-day, one-night camping expedition with a tour group, and then spending our last day exploring another cave on our own before heading out on another overnight bus (we’re getting to be experts at those by now). For me, this was the perfect combination because it allowed us to do the easier, more “civilized” caves with lighting and walkways, but also allowed us to do much more natural, adventurous caving as well. [Editor’s note: I agree with Jess completely. There are plenty of times where we didn’t optimize a city or attraction, but Phong Nha feels like a situation where we really nailed the experience by how we approached it and the time we allotted.] Here I’ll describe the three caves we did on our own, and Rorie will talk about our overnight expedition in the next post!
Exploring inside the Phong Nha cave
Phong Nha Cave and Tien Son Cave
Phong Nha Cave is one of the must-do caves in the area if you’re not on a tour (the other is Paradise Cave, which we saved for last). The unique part of Phong Nha is that it’s a wet cave with a river flowing through it, so the way to see it is to take a boat into the cave itself. The dock for the boats is right in town, about a five minute walk from our hotel, which also makes this the most accessible cave in the area. They have the system down – you need to buy an entrance ticket for the cave and also pay for the boat – but the boat is a fixed price whether you have 2 or 12 people on it. This means that most people try to hang out by the dock and wait for other tourists to join up in a group to make it cheaper, which is a fun way to meet people along the way. We ended up meeting a group of four backpackers from Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands and joined up with them for the day, which worked out perfectly because they were a very fun, like-minded group of folks.
Our boat on the beautiful river
Group selfie on the boat
The beginning of the journey was peaceful as we rode our small boat down the river and through the countryside, seeing rice paddies and buffalo herds grazing alongside the river. After about 45 minutes we got to what seemed like a dead end of the river, until we noticed the small entrance into the rock that looked barely big enough for the boat to pass through. The relatively unimpressive entryway adds to the whole experience, I think, because from the outside you have no idea what you’re about to ride into. Once the boat floated through the small opening, there was a small cavern and then an even lower rock that definitely didn’t seem possible to fit under. Our two boat operators (both local women) had switched off the motor and were paddling at this point, one standing on the front and one on the back. The rock was so low that the woman on the front had to crouch down and put her hands on the rock of the cave ceiling to push us through the opening! [Editor’s note: This was my first time floating on a boat through a cave and it was sincerely phenomenal! It’s impossible to adequately explain how surreal the experience is, but the combination of the vastness of the cave and the tranquility of the water splashing gently as the boat rocked created a truly special setting for seeing and appreciating the formations in the cave.]
Our boat approaching the unassuming cave entrance on the river
The boats barely fit through the second opening. Duck!
Once we made it past this point the cave opened up into an absolutely amazing, huge cavern with beautiful lighting illuminating all around us. We paddled slowly through the cave, taking in the sights around us and trying mightily to get photos that captured at least some of the feeling. After riding the boat for a while, we docked at a small beach in the cave and got off the boat to walk through a different part of the cave to a dry exit while our boat went back out the way we’d come to meet up with us later. We were extremely fortunate and ended up as the only group in the cave, which was unexpected and meant that we got a really beautiful, peaceful experience. Because it was so accessible and impressive, plus the added uniqueness of the boat ride, Phong Nha cave was completely worth it and a definite must-do.
Inside Phong Nha cave
Paddling down the river
Walking through the formations after disembarking from the boat
Quite the cavern, don’t you think?
A boat enters Phong Nha cave, seen from the inside looking out
After exiting Phong Nha Cave, we walked to a second cave nearby called Tien Son. This cave was much higher up on the mountain, so after huffing and puffing our way up hundreds of steep stone steps (with beautiful views of the surrounding countryside on the way), we were able to walk through this second cave and enjoy even more stunning formations, again with only our group around. We ended up just sitting at the end of the cave in a large cavern in silence for a while, simply taking in the sights all around us. [Editor’s note: I fully agree with Jess (a rarity) that Phong Nha Cave was an absolute gem and well worth the trip to the city. As for Tien Son Cave, it was cool but didn’t really add much to the experience that wasn’t already provided by Phong Nha Cave and Paradise Cave. Visit it if you have time and nothing else to do, but it’s also not a big deal to miss it so long as you do the other two caves. Plus, the steps to get to it caught us off guard and were brutal!] After descending back down the steps and meeting back up with our boat for the trip back down the river, we took our new friends to a restaurant we’d discovered the night before for dinner.
The gorgeous countryside, seen from the steps up the mountain to Tien Son cave
Climbing through cave formations
Our group sitting at the end of Tien Son cave
Us inside Tien Son
Rorie inside the massive caverns of Tien Son cave
The intrepid group inside the cave before heading back out
Paradise Cave
After our expedition, we had one full day to spare before getting on our next overnight bus, so we knew we wanted to visit Paradise Cave. Everything we’d read about Phong Nha said that Paradise Cave is the one must-do item, with some of the most spectacular formations of any cave in the park. This one was further out from the town, so we rented a motorbike and headed about 45 minutes to the parking area. Though I still don’t like motorbikes, this ride was vastly preferable to others we’ve done – the road was completely empty, pretty flat and not too curvy, and the scenery was gorgeous around us with untouched jungle wilderness surrounding small villages and farms.
After making it to our destination (despite the speedometer not functioning at all and receiving the bike empty and needing to fill it up), we parked and began the long walk up the mountain to the actual cave entrance. Paradise Cave is enormous, the biggest of the caves we’d seen. The pathway is about a kilometer long through the cave (though it actually extends over 30 km, only the first one is available without doing a tour). It was beautiful and impressive, just like the others. I can see why it’s a must-do cave in the area, though we actually felt that Phong Nha cave was an even better experience overall. [Editor’s note: I agree with Jess. Paradise Cave probably produces better photo opportunities overall than Phong Nha Cave, but the latter provided a better holistic experience since it has fewer visitors and the awesomeness of the boat ride.] We wandered through Paradise Cave for almost two hours, just looking in every direction at the huge formations all around us. The scale is what is truly impressive about all the caves we saw in Phong Nha Ke-Bang National Park – thinking about the millennia required to form the stalagmites and stalactites is staggering.
The gorgeous pathway into the distance of Paradise Cave
Rorie standing next to an enormous column formation in Paradise Cave
Me looking up at another crazy cave formation
Looking back towards the entrance to Paradise Cave, with lights lining the stairs all the way up to the surface.
We left Paradise Cave and rode our motorbike back to town, stopping for a few minutes in a large parking lot so I could practice driving around in figure eights a bit. I’m still nowhere near comfortable on a motorbike, but this ride was about as tolerable as it could be. Progress, I suppose! [Editor’s note: Jess needs to give herself more credit with this. She did an awesome job on the bike and definitely made lots of progress compared to the few times she tried operating them herself in Cambodia. Further, I’m proud of her for having the courage to get back on the bike and keep trying to learn how to ride them despite her natural discomfort with them. Be proud of her! Jess, be proud of yourself!] We finished our time in Phong Nha completely satisfied and caved out for a while – it was truly some of the most stunning natural formations I’ve seen, and I’m so glad we took the time we did to see as much as possible! [Editor’s note: Everything we did in Phong Nha (including the expedition we’ll cover in the next blog post) was a true highlight of both our time in Vietnam and our travels overall thus far. Nobody talks about it as a “must do” sight in Vietnam, but that needs to change immediately!]
More cave photos because how gorgeous is this?
River caves are the coolest
