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The most amazing cave
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Visiting Paradise Cave from Danang was about as adventurous as we get. The cave is situated in Phong Nha National Park - a place still in the throes of early tourism. There were plenty of amenities for backpackers and local day trippers but certainly no chain hotels and mass tour groups - yet.
My inspiration for this visit was from an article about the recently discovered Son Doong Cave in this area. It is so huge that it can hold a 747 plane. However, visiting this cave could only be accomplished with one tour guide company, a few thousand US dollars and 2 days of jungle trekking. Further research yielded other caves in the area that was worth seeing - especially Paradise Cave which was relatively easy to journey to. There were also lots of adventurous 2-8 day tours trekking through the jungle to explore other caves but it all seemed a bit arduous. Tourism for the masses have not yet appeared in the National Park which made us feel very pioneering.
I decided to hire a private car with driver for the 6 hour journey there and back. It was fairly reasonable at US$130 each way. For the journey to the park, we stretched out the car journey with a few stops along the way. This included lunch in the royal city Hue and visiting the 17th parallel (the line that divided North and South Vietnam during the war). There was one moment of panic when our driver dropped us off on one side of the bridge in a construction site and drove off. His English wasn't great and we didn't understand that he wanted us to walk across the bridge and he will meet us on the other side. There was no one around to ask - we were alone. Thankfully, we had pocket wifi. I contacted the car company via WhatsApp and we found our driver again.
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| Paul at the 17th parallel |
In Phong Nha, a very comfortable villa-hotel had opened up only 2 years prior - Victory Villas. With 7 villas in total, each villa had its own outdoor bath tub, kitchen and lounge area. The villa was spacious - comprised of 2 floors with the bedroom and bathroom upstairs and the lounge and kitchen downstairs. We particularly enjoyed the free Netflix account which gave us the opportunity to indulge in our favorite pastime of watching TV in the evenings. Breakfast was included in the stay and the owners would drive us into town to grab dinner in the army jeep. The alternatives in the area were farmstays and backpacking hostels so I was very thankful to have found Victory Villas.
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| Short trip to town on the army jeep |
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| Checking out the villa |
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| The outdoor bathtub at our Villa |
After a good night's sleep, we ordered another car to drive us to Paradise Cave which was about 9 miles away. Along the way, we saw dense jungle greenery, rice paddies and a man walking his buffalo to plow the rice paddies. Once we arrived at the cave car park, our driver could take us no further. We walked 1.6km to the cave entrance which took about 20 minutes - there was some uphill climbing involved! With each step, we hoped it was all worth it. It had only taken us about 8 hours to get to this cave...
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| Walking his buffalo |
At the entrance, we descended down the wooden steps into the cave. It was noisy with gaggles of schoolchildren but they were at the end of their visit and climbing back up. We had lucked out and enjoyed walking through the cave with only a few other visitors. Paradise Cave was only discovered in 2005. It is 31km long but only 1km has been built with wooden walkways for tourism. 7km of the cave is accessible to the public but only on specialized tours that take a whole day. The cave is filled with spectacular stalactites and stalagmites formations - giving it the name Paradise Cave. We spent at least a couple of hours walking through, admiring all the formations. I really don't think my photos can give justice to this amazing cave. Was it worth the 8 hour trip from Danang?
Yes.
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