Phong Nha wasn't even on our radar until a fellow traveler in Ho Chi Minh suggested it to us. It's an up and coming tourist spot known for one main thing: caves. Lots and lots of caves. We were near the end of our trip and Lewis was a little strapped for cash, but I was looking at loads of amazing tours and overnight treks that I wanted to do.
Unfortunately (but maybe luckily for our wallets), it was rainy season in Vietnam, and a lot of the caves were closed due to high waters. I had kind of assumed that Vietnam followed the same seasonal path as Thailand and rainy season was ending, but this obviously shows how lacking my research was on Vietnam. Suggestion: Don't travel during rainy season.
One of the most popular tours, the Discovery National Park with Phong Nha Farmstay, was still running, and that went to three of the main caves. It cost about $60 which wasn't cheap for Vietnam, but when you think of the cost of day tours in countries like England or Australia, it was extremely affordable.
Phong Nha Town
You can tell as soon as the bus pulls in that Phong Nha is not a big town. We were warned in a long, introductory email while booking our hostel that there is actually only one ATM in the town and it often does not work (it was out of order during our stay, in fact), so bring cash. There's one main street and it holds basically all the hotels, restaurants, and karaoke bars (oh, did you not know that karaoke is the hot night out in Vietnam?). The scenery is gorgeous, though!
We had booked accommodation at Easy Tiger, the most popular hostel in the area. We got off the night bus and didn't have much trouble finding it as it was the only place blaring live music. However, we were off to a bad start when we were told that their booking system had been down and they were forced to outbook us and a bunch of others.
They'd had recent flooding and apparently it'd messed with their wifi or program or something... however, I'd booked through email the day before, so I was kind of annoyed. In fact, you can only book Easy Tiger by contacting them directly- they don't use booking sites. I was more annoyed when the guy then couldn't find my name and realized that the girl I'd been emailing had never actually put me in the system.
Anyway, they booked us in for the following night, but for this first one, they put us in a hotel across the street. They even paid for the night, so it really wouldn't have bothered me if the place hadn't been kind of a shithole. It was a one star hotel called Thanh Phat, and I suppose the facilities were ok and everything, but when they took us up, the window had been left wide open and the room was absolutely full of bugs. They just closed the window and left us there, but I mean, the floor and ceiling were completely covered in mosquitoes and tiny flies. It was the first time we'd set up our mosquito net since Thailand. I can deal with basic accommodation, but I hate insects especially when they can potentially carry severe and deadly diseases.
We were able to move to Easy Tiger the next day (after our tour). It was a nice enough hostel (with the downside of the wifi which was spotty at best). The bar was always full at night with outdoor covered seating, and they have a live band on every other night. The food (with western and veggie options) was alright. There's a pool out back and a pool table inside. Our dorm was a cute little four bed with green and orange walls, mosquito nets above every bunk, and the coziest leopard print blankets. Also, like, everybody stays there.
Discovery National Park Tour
We were picked up nice and early by our chipper, appropriately named tour guide Sunny. There was something like 14 of us on the tour, and a van took us around for the day. This tour stopped at three caves: 8 Lady Cave, Paradise Cave, and Dark Cave. We were lucky because Dark Cave had been closed for a few recent days due to water levels, and the hostel had tried to offer us a replacement tour with the botanic gardens included instead. It was not all that much cheaper (still around $40) and would not have been at all worthwhile without Dark Cave. The other two caves could be explored by motorbike if necessary.
We had to basically pack three different outfits, one for each cave. 8 Ladies has a temple, so we needed to cover our shoulders. Sarongs were provided. Paradise we needed sturdy shoes for, and Dark Cave we needed bathing suits.
8 Lady Cave was first, and it has a sad story behind it. Back during the Vietnam War, eight people took shelter in this cave during a US raid. Tragically, a bomb caused a gigantic rock to block the entrance to the cave, trapping them all inside. Nobody was able to move the boulder although they attempted to transfer food into the cave over the next week. After 9 days, they no longer heard the voices of the people trapped inside. The bodies weren't removed for another couple of decades. Despite the name, it was actually four men and four women who died.
The cave is really small, and we didn't actually enter it. You can look down inside and see a shrine. We did go into the temple next door where items that were on the victims are kept such as shoes, pens, canteens, etc. There's also an altar with burning incense.
Next up was Paradise Cave, often regarded as the most must-see in Phong Nha. It was extremely large, and we took a ton of steps up to reach the entrance followed by a bunch of steps down into the cave chamber.
Views from the entrance were pretty unbelievable taking in the scope of the cave. There was a walkway throughout, stalactites, stalagmites, and pools of water. There's actually a full day tour where you can take a 7 km trek through Paradise Cave, leaving the walkway and swimming through sections. On the path, we only went 1 km inside.
We stopped for a nice lunch before making our way to the final stop, Dark Cave, which was by far the highlight of the tour. We changed into our swimsuits, grabbed life jackets and headlamp helmets, were fitted into harnesses, and headed over to the lake. There was a big, long zipline crossing the water, and we each took turns flying down to a far bank where we were able to give our harnesses back.
The next part wasn't so fun! We had to get in the water and swim over to the entry of the cave... and the water was freezing. So cold. I hate the cold. My cursing died down a little bit after I was fully in, but that could be from hypothermic shock, who knows. Luckily it was a short swim to the wooden entrance path, and wow! Dark Cave had such an ominous, jagged, black entrance. I was excited.
It grew darker and darker as we ventured into the cave, and without our headlamps, it would have been pitch black before long.
(This was taken on the way out, but you get the idea.)
The wooden path ended at a long pool of water, and we all got back into the cold and swam down through that section of cave. You could only see the glow of everyone's headlamps as you floated through the silent passage, and I just aimed mine at the high cave ceiling and enjoyed the cool experience.
When we emerged at the other end, we tossed our lifejackets to the side and climbed up a muddy hill by using a rope. After that it was a series of long, twisting, narrow tunnels before we reached our destination- the mud pits. In one line you had a group of clean arrivals, and in the opposite headed out were people just brown from head to toe.
We walked over a slippery hill and slowly walked deeper and deeper into a thick pool of liquid mud. It was so buoyant that you could lay back and float at the surface! We were filthy and laughing and it was a really weird, fun time.
It was our turn then to walk past the clean groups on the other side, and I was so off balance and sliding everywhere that I'm pretty sure I grabbed half of them and covered them in mud anyway. We walked back through the tunnels, washed off in the long water passage, put our lifejackets back on, and headed back out the cave.
Once we were back in the bright sun, we hopped into kayaks as groups of 4 and paddled back to the area where we'd originally ziplined.
Some people went on another small zipline, but it dropped into the water and I was nice and warm, so I passed. We took cold showers which did very little to wash the rest of the mud off of us, then we all gathered at a restaurant next door and were given free rum and cokes, an awesome way to end the tour.
I really enjoyed the whole day, and we met some other great travelers who we had dinner and drinks with in the evening.
Phong Nha & Tien Son Caves
We had one more full day in Phong Nha before our overnight bus to Hanoi, so we met up with an English couple from our tour the day before, Barney and Chrissy, to see a couple nearby caves. We only had to walk down the street to find the pier, and there was another group of people there who were also going out to the caves. The boat is a fixed price, so the more people we had, the cheaper it would be for everyone. We ended up with a full group, so it barely cost a thing individually.
It was a terrible day for weather, and it poured rain the entire time we were on the boat. Luckily there was a covering, but the fog made some of the views of the cliffs less impressive. The ride took longer than expected, and I'm sure we were on there for at least a half hour.
We finally came up to Phong Nha Cave immersed in the water, banked the boat, and walked over the entrance. We had to board another boat inside the mouth of the cave to cross over to the walking path.
Phong Nha Cave was definitely worth it! For some reason I enjoyed it better than Paradise Cave, actually. I think it was the fact that there was no set path inside and you could just wander around the floor of the cave, plus some of the features were better.
There were colorful spotlights, unreachable alcoves up near the ceiling of the cave, tiered water pools, and a beautiful waterfall! It was cascading down from the ceiling over a tall rock.
After we'd finished exploring there, we came out, took the boat back, and went up the stairs to a temple area.
From here we could start climbing to Tien Son Cave, but I had no idea what we were in for. It had luckily stopped raining by now, but it was 330 exhausting, steep stairs to the top of this cliff where the cave was located. Also, we were out of water. Bright side: The views were awesome.
Tien Son Cave was large with a steel walkway and a few more twists and turns than the others. You loop around one side to the end and then walk back a different way. I mean, I did like it, but man, those stairs were killer.
A highlight though was on the walk back down, we saw monkeys high up in the trees- too high to get a really good look at- and for once they weren't macaques! They were huge black monkeys with white faces, and I stayed back and strained my neck a bit trying to see them better, but no luck.
We caught the boat back to shore and got a better look at the cliffs and houses along the river now that the rain had stopped. The journey back was quicker.
We had dinner together at the Capture Cafe next to the hostel where they did pizzas, and the guy who ran it was an old Vietnam War vet from Southside in Pittsburgh! (My whole family is from Pittsburgh and I picked up his accent.) We had a nice chat and it's always weird to be reminded how small the world is.
After sitting in the lobby for awhile and booking our next hostel, we all caught our final overnight bus up to Hanoi at 10 PM. Phong Nha was worth visiting, and I would actually return again during a better season to do one of the overnight treks through the valleys and camp out in the jungle. We were in a rush though as we'd reached our final week in Southeast Asia, and next entry will cover our last stop in Vietnam.