After visiting four cultural UNESCO World Heritage sites in Vietnam, our fifth, Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, was our first natural site in the country. The park’s main attraction is its numerous limestone caves and mountains. You may have already seen glimpses of it if you watched the 2017 movie Kong: Skull Island.
One of the most exclusive tours is a three-night expedition into Son Doong Cave. It’s the largest cave in the world and just opened up to tourists in 2013. Amazingly, more people have stood on the summit of Mount Everest than have been inside this cave. Only one tour company runs expeditions inside the cave, and since they limit the number of people who can enter each year, tickets sell out very quickly, even with the $3,000 USD price tag!
We didn’t even try to go on that expedition. Rather, we went on a one-day hike into another cave, Hang Tien in the Tu Lan Caves System. It was a full-day tour that required a couple of hours of driving through the beautiful landscape before even starting the hike. The end of the drive was interesting because our guide told us that the valley floods considerably, and he showed us some of the houses that have been built to float when the floods come.
We hiked a couple of hours through the jungle and over a hill to arrive at the cave’s huge entrance. We then entered the cave and hiked another hour or so to the exit which was much smaller but still spectacular. After a short stop, we backtracked through the cave and eventually arrived at a base camp for multi-day hikes where we had a wonderful lunch and also had the opportunity to swim in a nearby pond.
Hang Tien and the rest of Phong Nha was definitely one of our highlights of Vietnam so you should try to go there if you have an extended stay in Vietnam. Maybe one day, if the price ever goes down, we’ll go back and tackle Son Doong Cave.
