We heard of Phong Nha almost purely by chance, when Lenny came across it on the internet. I was suspicious of it at first, as there wasn't much to go on in terms of research, except that it was only recently UNESCO heritage-listed and home to allegedly the largest cave in the world (Son Doong Cave), and that it's only been four years since the town opened to the public. Now that I've visited it, I can't imagine not having made the gamble to go to such a place.

Move, cow! Get out the way cow get out the way!

Flying in from Ho Chi Minh City, the first thing you would notice is the temperature drop, and the remoteness of the place. The forty-five minute drive from the airport to the town was a task in trying not to run over dogs and cows and water buffalo as we hurtled down the barren highway. Wet fields gave way suddenly to mountains hulking like sleeping monsters, and soon we were greeted by the sharp smell of manure riding on the wind. We were keen to rent some push bikes and take them for a spin immediately after settling in to our hostel, to get a feel of the place.

The town is just one big main road about 400m long, and then a giant loop around the national park that takes about two hours on scooters. It's incredibly tranquil, and in the meantime, the locals outnumber the handful of tourists who've heard about the limestone caves here. I don't know how long that would last though, and we all made predictions that it was only a matter of years before tourist developments begin to overrun the town. We cycled through the village, which is basically a collection of shacks with corrugated iron for roofs by the riverside, and kids would run out onto the street screaming "Hello! Hello!" and trying to high-five us. Further on, we cycled up narrow mountain paths where the scenery was something like that from the set of King Kong, where parts of the jungle would rise up from the mountainside like green ghouls slowly waking from their slumber. On the way back, we took a detour to what seemed like a major highway, except the roads and the median strip were terribly overrun. It was like another movie set, but this time like something out of a zombie apocalypse or a post-nuclear dystopia. What may have been unnerving to some, we found it bewitching and unlike any place we've visited before. And amidst all this natural beauty, farmers would go on running their daily lives, perhaps oblivious to the arresting scenery that surrounded them.

Cow stalking us like a good gollum

Waiting for the zombies to arrive

The next day, we did a trekking tour that saw us beat our way through heavy jungle despite treacherous ground. The whole path consisted of a descent into a valley, visit some caves, have lunch, and then ascend again in ten hours. This was real jungle bashing, through trails so narrow and undeveloped you would have thought they had only been created a few days ago. It was already suprisingly challenging enough but what pushed us was the mud that seemed to want to pull the ground from under our feet. There was so much of it that I suspected it was connected to a sewer that deposited all the diarrhoea we expelled in Thailand, and you just had to resign yourself to that fact that it was going to seep nice and thick into your shoes whether you liked it or not. Luckily there were a few river crossings that gave you a quick chance to rinse all the muck away, and the trek was made more exciting too by the fact that there was poison ivy in certain parts of the valley, at some points even hanging over the path.

The start of the trek

Our guide, who spoke zero English, whom we dubbed Speedy Gonzales for his admirable pace. At some points I would ask him "How long does it take to the end?" And he would smile and just say "No."

The first cave we visited was the exit end of the Dark Cave, a huge karst formation that we trekked about 1km in. Only the night before we had watched "The Descent", a horror film about a caving expedition gone awry, so after we turned the lights off deep in the chamber, my imagination was filled with cave gollums scrambling around in the absolute darkness, ready to feast on our malnourished bodies. Even deep into the cave we found white shrimps swimming in the shallow waters and large spiders that jumped from rock to rock. Lenny found it very romantic and said he would be a lovely place to take a girl here for a date. I was thinking it would be more of a great place to dump a body.

The opening of the Dark Cave

The Descent

We had a barbecue lunch where the guide laid out a big plastic sheet by a creek, and threw lumps of pork, rice, vegetables and tofu onto it. We sat around trying to roll up fat rolls with rice paper, and then it was back into caving again, this time with lifejackets on. We would be swimming another 700m into the underground river of E Cave, where the cold water commanded you to swim in to the darkness if you wanted to keep warm. I couldn't tell you how deep the water was, but when we turned our lights off at the end of our swim, it was the eeriest thing to be surrounded by darkness so thick you could almost swallow it. Surrounded by close walls, cold water, and that undiluted darkness, your imagintion would go crazy, only exacerbated by the constant drip, drip, drip of inky black water making sinister ripples on the surface. When we switched lights on, the current had already pushed us some ways away and we'd drifted from where we'd originally started. Our guide made us guess which way was out--luckily we chose correctly, and swimming back and finding the bright slit of the cave's mouth became more of an alluring sight than I'd orignally found.

Not only can Speedy hike, he can also cook! He's single, ladies.

In we go

Happy and cold

The trek was called the Abandoned Valley trek, and I would highly highly recommend it, especially before Phong Nha becomes too developed and commercialised. Doing so supports the employment of locals and they're a good group that really tries to reduce their footprint (they brought a military observer along, and they wouldn't even let me pee in the bush).

Happy and sweaty

The next and final day in our short stay in Phong Nha, we rented the shittiest scooters for the day (the speedometers weren't even working and stayed permanently at 0 kph) and did the loop around the National Park, visiting the more accessible and hence more touristy Dark and Paradise Caves.

Having set out at 7.30am, we spotted these early-birds going about their morning routine

But didn't you just visit the Dark Cave? Correct, but this time we entered it from the more approachable (and fun!) end, where you zipline 400m across and 30m deep close to the mouth of the cave, and jump into the cold waters to actually access the cave. You weren't allowed to wear shoes, so it was another slippery traverse through sharp rocks and pebbly streams, before the walls start suspiciously adopting the consistency of chocolate, and you realise that the whole thing is covered in inches of sludgy mud. Suddenly, the next step plunged knee deep into a pool of it, and in this pool were glass-like shards so fine but you just had to battle through trying to find your footing. It was quite tough-going due to the density of the mud, but after taking the longest amount of time to cross maybe 5 metres or so, it opened up into a proper pool where you could have a mud bath. Again, the density was such that you could lay back and float without any effort, although trying to swim in any direction was almost all but useless. I have to say it was one of the coolest things we've done so far (and for once there was minimal danger or risk to our lives!), and we enjoyed every moment in that bath before it reminded Lenny too much of his beloved Nutella and we had to pull him away before he started shoving mouthfuls of gooey mud into him.

Fresh from ziplining

Cold, cold, ball-dropping water

Felix Mosthaf, for Calvin Klein

Lenny Vogt, for Victoria's Secret

Guess which muscle Lenny is flexing?

Fossil

Kayaking back to our original location

Ropes course, where we could zipline and drop like turds from the air into the river

We next visited a small stream, which would have been uneventful except for the fact that I slipped on a rock and my camera fell into the water. Although it must've been only two seconds submerged, it was long enough that my camera seems to no longer be working. This pains me quite a lot, especially since there are still places to document, and it won't be till the end of the journey that I'll get to repair it and by then it would be too late. But that's okay; maybe if I think positively enough, the camera would start fixing itself from the inside.

Almost par for par like Yosemite

The water that killed my camera

Last of all, we visited the biggest (and most touristy) of all the caves: Paradise Cave. Surprisingly, it was perched so high up on the limestone mountains, which meant that the water level must have once up to 200m high above sea level? I should've paid more attention in geology. Anyway, this cave was only discovered ten years ago by a local, and opened to the public four years ago. Looking up some stats online, it claims to be 31km long, reaching 100m high and 150m wide. The mind struggles to comprehend how large this cave is, until you actually take a stroll around the part open to the public, which alone takes 45 minutes to complete. Forty five minutes to walk around what must have taken millions of years of erosion to create, with stalagmites and stalagtites so impressive they look like giant candles dripping with wax, or even calcified jellyfish rising up to the expansive veined ceiling of rock above.



Our trip unfortunately had to end then, as the last days of Vietnam are going to prove to be tight and intensive on time. We would have loved to see other caves, such as boating through Phong Nha Cave's underground river, but I've got a feeling I'll be revisiting this place. Even if it does become overdeveloped. I still remember the terrific friendly people and the local kids who would run into the road to greet us, and even the great BBQ pork noodles served up there. My favourite memory though would be hurtling through the highway on our scooters, being swallowed by the majesty of it all through scenery that would rival those of Yosemite. Just the three of us boys, our clothes flapping in the wind, and some cows unperturbed by it all, content to watch us pass as they graze by the side of the road.


Read on next time, as the second leg of our Vietnam Adventure tour finds us in sleeper buses where strangers try to rush off with your bags, and we attempt to climb the mountains of Sapa in inadequate wet-weather gear!