Phong Nha and caves, Vietnam

After reading a National Geographic article last year about incredible caves in Vietnam, we knew it would be a worthwhile stop to make as we traveled down the coast. Unfortunately, the largest-yet-discovered cave is not open to the public until later next year (unless you are willing to pay a $500 bribe). The national park that houses it has other equally impressive caves that are slightly smaller, but the one we decided to focus on has the honour of being the longest in Vietnam. In order to get there we took an overnight train from Hanoi to Dong Hoi, and then hired a scooter to ride the 35km to Phong Nha - a beautiful ride on extremely good quality but unusually quiet roads.

Phong Nha is on the precipice of becoming a very touristy town, but at the moment only has a handful of hotels and the same number of restaurants. The view from our hotel window was typical of the vistas seen from the village.

Because there are still so few tourists, the locals were even friendlier than we had experienced before, with every child saying hello and old people smiling as we rode past.

The riverfront was almost completely without development, and we had a real sense that everything would soon change, hopefully bringing some good to the local community, as well as the obvious consequences.

But we had come to see the legendary cave formations, and not wanting to spread ourselves too thin, we decided to only visit one - Paradise Cave, Thiên Đường in Vietnamese. We had read that it was very tastefully managed, with timber boardwalks and superb lighting. The entrance betrayed nothing of it's interior, and we ducked under a rock to descend the stairs.

Once the eyes had time to adjust we were confronted with a prodigious cavern and massive formations. The scale was hard to comprehend as there were few reference points. I took a picture looking back toward the entrance and stairs to give some perspective.

The limestone walls and ceiling were richly adorned with stalactites and columns, that had formed when a stalactite (c for ceiling) and a stalagmite had met. Also impressive were fallen stalactites that had become too heavy for their anchor points.

It was stupefying to think that all this intricacy had been formed by the deposition of minerals dissolved in water, but the evidence was plain to see as we witnessed and heard constant dripping.

What I couldn't understand was how some of these drips could form the kind of structures we saw - ribbons of rock and walls of rippled ridges.

The presence of water also created some wonderful optical illusions. Some of the pools were so still and clear, from one angle they appeared to show a hole as deep as the ceiling above, while from others they created perfect reflections, more vivid than any mirror.

Luckily, we took our time exploring, and obviously, taking photos. We arrived early - at 8.30, which unfortunately coincided with two noisy tour groups and took away from the ambience slightly. By around 11 though, we had the place completely to ourselves for around 30 minutes, and it had a powerful effect. This has certainly been one of the highlights of our trip.