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Published: August 28th 2012
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The world’s most beautiful & magnificent cave
A $7.50 train ride to Dong Hoi. This is a much safer option than the bus that teeters on the edges of lakeside cliffs as we dodge lane-swapping oncoming traffic. Upon arrival at our hotel we enquired about a few different tour options for the famous ‘Phong-Nha Caves’. After some consideration of the very limited
tour options we decided to hire a motorbike and endure the 140km round trip ourselves.
That night we went in search of dinner. We weren’t after much, but when thinking back to our time in Battambang, Cambodia this place is 5 times quieter. Dong Hoi was a ghost town and luckily enough the only apparent person who spoke English was the manager at our hotel. We managed to find a restaurant that kindly offered us the “Foreign only Menu”.
The following morning was an early rise to get a start on our bike ride to the caves. We asked our hotel receptionist for directions on how to get to the caves. A hand-drawn map with inaccurate distances written on it was the best we got. We were on the wrong track within about 1km from leaving our hotel. It turns out iPhone maps
are a saviour in this instance. We set off to explore the farthest cave first ‘Paradise Caves’, then work our way back to ‘Phong-Nha caves’.
Past the entrance gate Paradise Cave was a 2km walk, plus an extra 500m up the mountain. The 20 or so steps down into the cave saw the cavern open up into the most amazing sight either one of us had seen. It has been labelled the world’s most beautiful & magnificent cave and at this moment we could see why. Paradise is the largest dry cave in Vietnam and is a new addition to the Phong-Nha-Ke-Bang National Park cave system recently opened in December 2010. The cave stretches 31.4km in length, with only about 1km of boarded walkway.
After lunch at Paradise Caves we picked up some followers – a Vietnamese family of four on their motorbike who decided we looked like we knew where we were going, so followed us on our bike to our next stop – Phong Nha Cave.
Phong-Nha is a wet cave, so we split a boat with a Vietnamese tour group. A 20 minute ride along the river past local villages took us to the
cave. We took a further 20 minute ride through the cave where landed on a sandy beach at the end and were allowed to explore a little further. We would definitely advise to see the caves in the opposite order as to what we saw them. We were left feeling little amazement after the sight of Paradise Caves. We were somewhat of an attraction on our boat and it seemed the Vietnamese tour group all wanted to take photos with us. Just as we were departing the caves for home a lovely old lady ran up to us with two professionally printed photos of Mark & I with her. She wrote her name and several contact numbers on the back, but with us not speaking Vietnamese and her no English it was going to make it difficult for us to contact her.
We only saw two other Westerners on bikes the whole day, so I guess it’s no surprise we got a few funny looks. The whole day saw us cover 160km’s on the bike through rain, dirt-pothole roads and long stretches of highway.
Our arrival back at our hotel allowed for a quick shower and dinner in
time for our sleeper bus to Ha Noi. In search of one of the very limited restaurants in Dong Hoi we came across dimly lit empty local eatery. The owner was standing on the front steps looking across the road at the competition restaurant that had not one seat to spare. As we walked up the steps the owner excitedly welcomed us in and in Vietnamese called out to the chef and shouted what we imagined was “Look, we have guests!” The chef jumped up and in what seemed the only English he knew said “Chicken & Rice” and proceeded to change the TV channel to an American movie. Funny experience and we ended up with an all-sorts soup in the end.
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Anita
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Amazing!!!
Hey Guys, some amazing photos of the caves, can't wait to see more of your trip.