Caves!

Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park is another UNESCO World Heritage Site (we seem to be hitting lots of those!) and is the location of the world's largest and second largest caverns as well as a new huge Cavern called Paradise Cave (Dong Thien Duong) discovered in 2005 and was featured in January 2011's National Geographic.

We heard about this place by running into a Norwegian Travel Writer staying at our guesthoue in Luang Prabang (Laos).  He'd stayed at a local guest house (Phong Nha Farmstay) and was raving about it and the caves.  He'd struck up a conversation with our resident geologist (Shawn) and impressed the heck out of him with stories and pictures so it was a must do for us - despite the fact that it was very difficult to get to and do properly.  Most tours in Hue only do Phong Nha Cave - Paradise is about another 40kms further away and is not well known yet so getting there was a challenge.

We had already booked an overnight train ticket out of Hue on the 28th for Ninh Binh up close to Hanoi on the coast and when we got to Hue we discovered that trips to Phong Nha took all day and still didn't take in Paradise Cavern which our geologist insisted was a must!  I also was dying to do the DMZ and not by tour bus, so we bit the bullet so to speak and got a car/driver to take us up to Paradise Cavern (about 4 hours from Hue) and then back to Phong Nha and to Dong Hoi to spend the night before going back along Highway 1 to the DMZ and then along Highway 9 to Khe Sanh and back into Hue in time for our train.  It was a lot to do, and much of it was on our natural route from Hue up to Ninh Binh but we didn't relish the idea of tackling the Vietnamese Railway guys and rearranging tickets on the night train so we left it at that.

The drive up was quite pretty... much of it starting in rice paddies and typical pastoral scenes of Vietnam we'd become used to but then as we passed close to the DMZ, we started getting into the Karst formations that characterise much of Northern Vietnam (and are the largest in the world).  At one point, we passed a relic of the Ho Chi Min trail but I had assumed we'd get back to it so didn't force the driver to turn around for some pictures - stupid me.  It was a 5' strip of trail, paved that headed into thick jungle.   Amazing to think that the VC and NVA carried most of their war materials down it.  When you look at the terrain it went through and the natural vegetation, it isn't surprising the American's had an impossible time containing it.

Anyway, back to Phong Nha and Paradise Caves.  When we got to Paradise, we were very surprised to find all new infrastructure.  We'd read about having to take golf carts up muddy roads but these were all perfectly concrete pathways with bilingual signage and great railings, steps, etc.  It's obvious that Vietnam is looking for this to become their next big thing.

We'd seen a bunch of caves already, including the stunning Cango Caves outside of Oudtschorn in the Eastern Cape in South Africa but were still unprepared for what we were to see here.  There were very few people in the cavern with us and no guides so for the most part it was dead quiet... which was very appropriate as our jaws were dragging on the pathway in awe.  I'll let the pictures do the talking but WOW....

After climbing half way up the mountain (1200 steps up), down we go into the Halls of Moira.

This doesn't begin to give you a sense of perspective of how big this is..  you could put multiple jumbo jets in here

After Paradise, we headed back to see Phong Nha which is the one the tourists all do.  Jen had (reasonably) requested we do Phong Nha first but I either wasn't listening or didn't clue in and let our driver head to Paradise first.  After seeing Paradise, we had believed we were in for a let down.  I'm happy to say, that while it wasn't quite as impressive as Paradise, Phong Nha has it's own charms and we loved it almost as much. It was quite cool how you took boats in to the cavern and got to wander around once inside.

This was the Dragon Boat we took to the cave

A little village along the river on the way

I was always surprised at how many churches there were in Vietnam

Wasn't sure what this was....  why do they need such a big light house on a river?

In we go....

Our front rowing lady (her hubby was at the back)

And out we go

After Phong Nha, it was back to Dong Hoi, a small town on the coast for a night's rest.  It is a very NON touristy town and we didn't see another white face.  We had some fun finding a restaurant as there was no English on any of the signs and the neighbourhood was very "local".  The first one we saw had about 20 high school aged kids in it so we started to walk down the street to the next one we could see and all these kids got out and followed us... laughing and giggling.  After a while of this, one of them worked up the courage to talk to us in broken English asking us where we were from.  We stopped and had a good old chin wag with them.  Turns out they were graduating out of Form 4 (Grade 12) and were celebrating.  They were fascinated by the kids and couldn't believe that Shawn was only 13... the guys were all so envious of his height!  It was one of the best experiences of our trip in Vietnam...  very cool.

The next am, we set out for the DMZ.