Cave Hopping In Vietnam

After leaving Hoi An we headed to a remote city named Dong Hoi. It was a ghost town when it came to tourists, but we were there on a very important mission; to see the some of the biggest caves in the world! There were so few tourists, in fact, that all the locals were very excited to see "Phalong" (foreigners).  People would stop and stare at us, as if we were aliens,  but when we would wave happily to them, they were excited and would wave back. We could only find one restaurant with a menu in English, and as such, we ate most of our meals there.

 

Working in the rice fields

We got ourselves on a tour that left at 8am and drove us almost an hour out of the city to the Phong Na National Park, a world heritage site. The drive went through the countryside with amazing views of green mountains layered behind rice paddie terraces. When we first arrived at the park we got into a traditional old wooden dragon boat (with a loud, not so traditional motor) that took us on another hour ride down the Son River toward the mouth of the Phong Na Cave. The river led us straight through the sun glittering opening and only minutes later, we were swallowed up by the eerie darkness.





Entrance to Phong Na Cave

 

 The Cave is 7729m deep and filled with beautiful stalactites and stalagmites made by the crashing river water over the thousands of years. We were in awe. We spent about an hour exploring the inside of the cave that was open to visitors before we headed back down the river and back to the mainland for another amazing authentic Vietnamese lunch with our group.

 

Once we were fueled up, we all packed back into the van and headed toward the real wonder of the trip; Paradise Cave. The most amazing thing about this one is it was only discovered in 2005 by a local Vietnamese man and it was only opened to tourists less than 3 years ago. We felt pretty special being there especially because it's such a new and immense discovery in the Phong Na area, and people are travelling from all over the world just to see what it's all about. Paradise Cave is 10 times more grandiose and marvelous than the first one we had visited being 31 km long and reaching up to 150 m in height in some areas; the 3rd largest cave in the world! Here, we had to hike up quite a bit to get to the entrance and then walk down several staircases to get to the core, but it was well worth it!

 

 

After the tour we had one last meal at the only English speaking restaurant in Dong Hoi and picked up some treats at a great bakery we found, then jumped on another sleeper bus heading to Hanoi. The bus had 70's and 80's music blaring and disco lights all around. We slept like babies after an hour of grooving to the music and the next thing we knew the sun was coming up and we had arrived at our final destination in Vietnam.

It was only 5:30 in the morning and we had a 3.8 km walk to our hotel. There was no way we were going to take a chance of getting ripped off by another taxi driver in this country. Luckily, we found the walk to be very pleasant and peaceful. The streets of Hanoi were much quieter than the other big cities we had visited with minimal honking  and a sense of peace in the mildly breezy air. As we got closer to the old district we walked along the lakeside, passing hundreds of women doing their morning exercises and practicing choreographed dances.

We spent 8 days in the old district of Hanoi. The first few days we got some homework out of the way. We dropped off our passports at the Indian Embassy to get our tourist visas underway, but not before we were send on a wild goose chase to find a place that would make passport photos for us. The heat and humidity were unbearable in this city, so after visiting the American War Prison (where John McCain was held), we spent most of the hottest parts of the days in our amazing, air conditioned hotel room. This left the nights open for visits to the night market and socializing with our Italian friends; Luca and Giada who we had met way back in Fiji.

The hot days led to crazy storms in the north of Vietnam forcing us to postpone our tour to the stunning Halong Bay. However, when the weather cleared up, we were on the first bus out to the famous rocky mountainous bay. On the tour, we did some more caving, kayaking, swimming, hiking and made a huge group of new friends that we partied with on the top of our boat until the wee hours of the morning.

All in all, Vietnam was one of our favorite countries that we've had the opportunity to visit  and we highly recommend it anyone.

To our loyal readers,
Saying goodbye to a beautiful country,
D'Alice

P.S. Sorry we didn't add a map this time, we were having internet connection problems.