We leave Hué after a short stay to visit its citadel, and get back on the road North, to Phong Nha, near the border with Laos.
Here is a mountain area with many summits at 3,280 ft above sea level or higher.
The Phong Nha-Ke Bang national park is a UNESCO world heritage site, it is also the largest natural protected area in Vietnam. It is one of the oldest karstic mountain area in Asia (400,000 million years), but also one of the largest clay regions in the world.
Road between Hué and Phong Nha
125 miles await us from Hué. We leave at 7:30 am for a 4 and a half hour drive. The landscapes when we arrive near Phong Nha are amazing. Between rice fields and mountains we love it.
All alone in our guesthouse
We arrive in Phong Nha around noon and directly walk to our guesthouse where we will stay the next two nights.
Located a little outside the main road, the house is beautiful, right at the foot of the mountains. The view from our room and our patio is really nice.
We meet our host Ngoc, who is adorable. Unfortunately communicating with him is a little hard because he understands absolutely no English. We have to do everything through Google Translate. We are the only customers in his guesthouse that opened less than 2 months ago. He proposes to cook us a sort of tasting meal for tonight with Vietnamese specialties. Of course we accept !
Walking around Phong Nha
Meanwhile we go grab lunch in the tiny city center. And we walk along the river, watching the boats leaving to go visit the caves.
We will visit them tomorrow. Indeed there are over 100 caves in this natural park, and a handful are open to the public.
There are nice views on the mountain tops here. The mountains covered in lush jungle offer a splendid natural beauty.
We go spend the rest of the afternoon at the guesthouse while Maider’s parents go for a walk around the countryside. They come back super happy with plenty of beautiful photos.
First evening at “home”
For dinner, Ngoc and his family cooked us a delicious dinner.
A large table is set with plenty of different dishes to share. Soup, fried spinach, chicken curry, fried spring rolls, pumpkin cake, rice and noodles with veggies…
Basically enough to feed at least 10 people and we are only 4.
Ngoc sits down with us and we try hard to have a conversation. He explains that he built the house himself, he is 34 years old, has been married for 10 years and has 2 little boys, one is 4 years old, the other one 9. Here the entire family lives together with the grandparents.
We spend a great evening together.
The next day is Brigitte’s birthday, and Ngoc cooked us an amazing breakfast. Banana and chocolate pancakes for Maider, Brigitte and Justin, and a delicious omelet sandwich for Matt. Perfect to start the day.
Phong Nha and Tien Son caves by boat
Today we plan on visiting the Phong Nha and Tien Son caves. Before celebrating Brigitte’s birthday around a great meal at our guesthouse tonight.
We leave around 8 am to visit the two caves. These caves can be visited by motor boat from the city center. We share the expenses of the boat with a Dutch couple also wanting to visit both caves.
We hop on the boat all 6 of us to go discover the caves.
We have a 40 minute boat ride along the river in the middle of the valley surrounded by huge clay summits. It is beautiful.
We also watch the locals on their boats. The ride is very nice, and at this early hour there are only very few tourists.
When we arrive at the entrance of the Phong Nha cave, the boat shuts down its engine. The rest of the way will be done rowing as we slide inside the cave.
The cave is 5 miles long, with a 1 mile long underground river flowing inside.
We ride during 15 minutes inside this absolutely amazing cave. We don’t have the words to describe how beautiful it is. So here are some pictures that we hope will help you imagine :).
The boat ride stops in the middle of the cave to let us come back by foot, to better admire the inside of the cave. Here we have plenty of time to stop and take pictures in front of huge stalactites and stalagmites. And we are able to appreciate how incredible these shapes are. The sizes, the shapes but even the colors are incredible in here. Once again the scenery is amazing. Pictures speak louder than words :
We walk out the cave and go up to the Tien Son cave.
To get to the entrance we have to climb 330 steps from Phong Nha.
We stop a few times on the way to catch our breath and take pictures of the beautiful valley bellow us.
In the Phong Nha cave, there were a few groups of Vietnamese tourists, but in this one there is absolutely nobody. It is only the 6 of us. Silence is king here, for our biggest delight.
After the steep climb that made us all sweat a lot, we start visiting the cool cave. This one too is beautiful.
The Tien Son cave is 3,215 ft long. Even if they don’t directly join each other, Tien Son and Phong Nha are part of the same network of caves. Tien Son is called the castle of stalactites because of the thousands of beautiful colored stalactites.
We can’t stop taking pictures (actually Maider and Brigitte can’t stop…). We are all amazed by the beauty of this cave. What do you think ?
We finally make our way back to the boat, super happy with our experience this morning. These two caves are absolutely stunning, and definitely our favorite so far.
We get back on the boat and ride to the village.
Relaxing by the river
For lunch we decide to stop in one of the riverside restaurants we saw when we were on the boat, with a nice view on the river.
We spot the perfect place and have an excellent meal.
Everything here is super quiet, a little like if time had stopped. We even stay after lunch for a short nap. Heaven on earth !
We get back to our guesthouse in the afternoon, and let Justin and Brigitte go for another short walk.
Happy birthday Brigitte
This evening we plan on celebrating Brigitte’s birthday at our guesthouse. Ngoc and his wife prepared us a delicious meal and had a cake made for Brigitte’s birthday. On the cake you can read “Happy Birthday Brigitte”, they even bought candles with her age!
Ngoc even went out of his way and offered a beautiful rose made out of paper and a bracelet. Absolutely adorable.
For the occasion we bought a bottle of wine and share a glass the 6 of us. Another great moment spent all together.
We then devour our delicious meal. On the menu tonight : fresh spring rolls, stir fried vegetables and beef, tuna with tomato sauce, without forgetting the rice and the soup.
Paradise cave
The next morning we wake up early again to go visit Paradise cave. To go there we rent motorbikes and drive a 35 mile loop through the Phong Nha national park.
Today we will visit both Paradise cave and Dark cave.
Paradise cave is located 12 miles away from the city. The road to get there is simply breathtaking. Between mountains, jungle, banana trees, river, everything is here.
We arrive at the parking lot at 8:30 am and it is still empty. There is only 1 bus of Vietnamese tourists. Perfect.
From the parking lot to the entrance of the cave we have to walk 1 mile.
This cave is considered to house the most incredible stalactites and stalagmites of the entire park.
After another hot walk, where we all sweat, we finally make it inside the cave where we are all alone. Which is perfect.
The place is silent and we admire the magnificent beauty of this cave. It is as if we were in a sci-fi movie, on some lunar landscape. It is incredible.
We are amazed by the size and beauty of this cave.
What makes our experience even better is that we are all alone. We only ran into one group of 10 people. Awesome.
Dark cave
We then leave towards the dark cave. The road to get there is just as beautiful.
Here we visit another cave but we will also go for a zip-line ride, take a mud bath, do some kayak and play in the water.
We start with the zip-line. A first for Maider’s parents.
It is 1,300 ft long and everybody manages just fine.
At the other end of the zip-line we have to swim to the entrance of the Dark cave.
Thankfully we are equipped with a helmet and a hand lamp, because here there are no lights.
We are a group of 15 and start walking inside the cave. It is pretty fun to discover a cave with only light our headlamps.
After a while, the guide takes us to take a mud bath. We have ten minutes to enjoy this bizarre experience. We laugh a lot and apparently it is even good for our skin!
We come back the other way and climb inside a raft. But not for long, we only have to get back to the boat ramp, 1,300 ft further.
From there several water attractions. Matt and Justin go for a zip-line ride where you end in the water.
Justin will even do a back-flip (we will learn that it was absolutely not done on purpose) !
It is 12:30 pm when we are done and sit down to grab a bite at the restaurant.
We hop back on our motorbikes early afternoon and ride back to Phong Nha.
The landscapes are as always unbelievable.
We stop a few times on the way to take pictures.
The countryside around Phong Nha is stunning, and thanks to the motorbikes we are free to stop whenever and wherever we like.
Before coming back to our guesthouse we ride along the river one last time.
And come back on countryside roads.
Matt will run out of gas and will have to push his scooter over the last half mile.
Our amazing hosts will let us stay at their place the rest of the afternoon and even let us take a shower before catching our over night bus to Tam Coc.
The next leg of our journey : Halong Bay on Land.
Our stay in Phong Nha was fabulous, in large part thanks to our amazing hosts but also because of the beautiful caves we visited. Honestly before coming to Vietnam we had no idea there were so many big and beautiful caves. It is full of delight that we make our way to our next destination.