On our last day in Phong Nha, we traveled three kilometers up the Son River on a dragon boat to Phong Nha Cave. When it opened in 1995, it was considered the longest cave in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, but it was dethroned by Paradise Cave in 2005, which we visited the day before. The river goes into the cave so we were able to travel another kilometer inside before being dropped off at a point where we could walk around a bit to see additional formations and then walk back to the entrance.
The cave was similar to Paradise Cave in that it was artificially lit, but it was much less grand, so we enjoyed Paradise Cave a lot more. But we did like our Phong Nha Cave experience more than the tour we did of the Puerto Princesa Subterranean Underground River in the Philippines (still great, but we didn’t get to see that much), and the Underground River is recognized as one of the New7Wonders of Nature.
