SOUTHEAST ASIA 2024—FEBRUARY 25 – 26, HUE TO NINH BINH VIA PHONG NHA KE BANG

The 13:47 train from Hue arrived at Dong Hoi/Phong Nha station at 16:51, right on time. We were picked up by a van sent by Phong Nha Farmstay, our hotel. We chose this eco-accommodation because of its proximity to Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park, an area renowned for its natural beauty, including its limestone caves, and because Phong Nha Farmstay organizes cave tours. We had booked one for the following morning.

Unfortunately, our hotel choice proved to be the first hiccup of our trip. Despite having reserved a room in the hotel through Booking.com, we were not housed in the “French colonial boutique and unique accommodation” proper. Instead, after dinner, the rather brash Australian owner piled our bags into his Jeep and shuttled us off to “The Elements,” a couple of modern, newly-built, decidedly uncharming villas located about 15 minutes away from the old-fashioned hotel. The Elements are described on the website as:

This cluster of 3 privates, 2 bedrooms with luxury pool villas are deeply positioned in a rural paradise away from other tourism. They are connected to Phong Nha Farmstay, 1km away by a courtesy car (old American Army Jeep) or by bicycle. Operated and managed by the Phong Nha Farmstay, they are unique and highly sort [sic] after.
If staying at the Villas, you will find a unique experience of comfort and luxury, set in the rural Vietnamese countryside. Each Villa is fully appointed and by far this property is hard to beat, locally, in its design and execution.

In fact, the Villas (above) are quite easy to beat; e.g. by the old-fashioned hotel (below). So, beware the bait and switch! If you choose this accommodation and want to feel connected to the rest of the guests and stay in the charming hotel, which is a rambling complex of clapboard farmhouse structures surrounded by gorgeous rice paddies, be sure to specify that you do not want to stay in the Villas.

But I digress. As I said, the big draw of Phong Nha Farmstay was its tour of Paradise Cave, recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We had planned to stay just the one night in the hotel, visit the cave the next day, and then catch a sleeper train that same evening to Ninh Binh, the next stop on our itinerary. While we weren't really into the boozy, billiard "bro culture" at Phong Nha Farmstay, the hotel staff was excellent at organizing a memorable cave trip.

Paradise Cave is mind-bogglingly spectacular. The images of the cave on Vinpearl are much better than ours, as the cave is truly enormous and difficult to photograph with an iPhone. This is what Vinpearl has to say about the cave:

Paradise Cave was initially discovered in 1992 by a group of British cavers from the British Cave Research Association. The official announcement of this discovery was only made in 2005, after a Vietnamese resident of Phong Nha-Ke Bang joined the team to search for new caves.

Paradise Cave Vietnam is approximately 31,4 kilometers long and 60 meters high, making it one of the longest dry caves in Asia.

The cave is naturally adorned with a vast array of exquisite stalactites and stalagmites, which have been formed over thousands of years. They come in many different shapes and sizes, and some are so large that they reach up to the ceiling of the cave.

The pathways within the cave are also well-maintained, making it accessible to people of all ages. From the small entrance, you will reach a spacious area with a length of about 15 meters, surrounded by numerous stalactites. But once you reach the main cave, you will experience an incredibly vast space with a width of up to 150 meters.

Paradise Cave is a “dry” cave, but there is water in it, depending on the time of year. During the dry season, it is possible to walk seven kilometers into the cave, but during the rainy season, you cannot go beyond the first kilometer, which is accessed via a raised boardwalk. We were on the cusp of the dry/rainy season, so we were able to walk four kilometers into the cave.

We met our Vietnamese woman guide at the car park/restaurant area below the cave, where we were issued plastic sandals (because we would encounter water) and helmets with miners' headlamps.

Then we hiked up the 500 stone steps to reach the cave entrance, and from there, we took a wooden stair down into the cave.

Following our guide, this is what we saw from the boardwalk in the first kilometer.

When the boardwalk ended, so did the lights. We turned on our headlamps and climbed down a wooden ladder onto the sandy cave floor, sometimes scrambling over rocks as we walked into the dark void.

In the next three kilometers we saw stalactites and stalagmites that looked as it they had melted into place. The air was very humid, and our headlamps illuminated a mist that we at first thought were tiny gnats moving to and fro.

At the four-kilometer mark, we reached a small lake, where some of our group swam while others got into kayaks. When they'd had their fill and changed back into dry clothes, we all sat on rocks and had a hot lunch packed in by our guide.

On the return, my husband took a couple of videos to try to capture the volume of the space inside the cave.

The awe we experienced inside this cathedral of calcium carbonate was once in a lifetime and hard to top. But, then again, we hadn't yet seen the karst formations in Trang An or Halong Bay. So let's not rush to judgment.

While my husband relaxed after our cave trip, I took a walk in the countryside surrounding our hotel. I saw rice fields that stretched forever,