Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! It’s Alex again, we’re a little delayed in this update because we’ve had a busy few days. We’ve slept in a different place for each of the past five nights. Leaving Hue we headed to a town called Phong Nha (FUNG-YA). We heard about this place from a German girl in our first hostel in Saigon. She said that there was a National Park there and that she recommended going there. After doing some research I learned that the National Park is home to the biggest cave in the world! As well as tons of other amazing caves that have been discovered somewhat recently. If you read about it on Wikipedia it says that the biggest cave was first found in 1991, but wasn’t explored in more depth until 2009. It’s only been accessible to tourists since 2013! If you’re like me, then you’ve gotten excited just reading about this place too! Unfortunately, we did not get to explore this cave because they don’t run tours during this season and it also costs around $3000 per person. But we did sign up to do a jungle trek that explored some other caves and it was a awesome experience!
We arrived in Phong Nha late at night by bus from Hue. It took around four hours. Waking up the next morning we found that we were surrounded by limestone mountains. The town of Phong Nha is pretty small and I don’t think it’s even considered a city. It’s more of a commune of villages. Anyways the street we stayed on was lined with hotels (maybe 10-15), a handful of restaurants and other shops that cater to tourists. Pretty crazy to think that this whole street has been developed recently once the caves brought attention to the area.
Our first day we planned to rent bicycles and explore the area of the National Park we could by bicycle. However, our plans changed when one of the bikes at the little rental shop had bad brakes. So we ended up deciding to just rent a moped for the day (it cost $4). The Vietnamese woman asked if we had driven one before and she had a brief “ah shit” look on her face when we answered no. But she gave us a quick rundown how to work the moped and we were off. I have to admit I was a bit nervous to drive the moped and got off to a very wobbly start but after ten seconds it was easy. I mean it’s just a moped after all. We picked up three liters of petrol from these ladies on the street that had the gas in plastic water bottles and we spent most of the day doing a big loop through the National Park. The road that we were on was well paved (compared to most Vietnamese roads) and took us through the mountains of the jungle. One of the things we enjoyed most was how we saw almost no other tourists the whole day we were riding on the moped. Most of the time we were the only people on the road. I think this was a combination of time of year (the weather is better in April and May) and that not as many tourists travel to Phong Nha. I read somewhere that exploring Phong Nha you get to experience the “rural, authentic Vietnam”. In the sense that the area is not a developed city, it’s just farming villages, the local people, rice paddies, cows, buffaloes and kids on bikes that yell “Hello!” at white people like us.
The main activity that brought us to Phong Nha was the jungle trek that I mentioned earlier. Oxalis, the company that runs tours to the biggest cave, also has a handful of other tours that aren’t as intense. One that sounded suitable for Rach and I was a 2 day 1 night “cave encounter” where you trek five or so miles into the jungle, camp overnight and explore a few caves in the Tu Lan cave system. Rach wasn’t too keen on the idea of paying to sleep in the jungle (where there could be mosquitoes, leeches and snakes) and swim through the wet caves in the middle of winter (the south of Vietnam is always hot but as you get further north it gets colder). She hit me with the “I mean I wouldn’t choose to do this myself, but if you want to do it I’ll go with you.” I couldn’t blame her because we had no idea what it would be like and it was also expensive, $240 per person. Sometimes it’s easy to let your anxiety talk you out of doing something adventurous, but I’ve learned from my brother that we’re usually physically capable of more than we think and you can’t let fear keep you from doing something unforgettable. So I decided to book the tour! Rach didn’t let me hear the end of it for a while, but in the end we both had a great experience!
I’m going to sum up the experience in bullet points because it’s just easier:
- We were picked at our hotel at 7:30 AM and bused to the Oxalis headquarters which was an hour and a half away.
- On the bus all of us participating in the tour introduced ourselves. There was eleven of us in total (Oxalis sets a max limit on the number of people in the tours, 10-12). There were two Dutch girls, a Swiss couple, an American couple, a solo American girl, and two Australian women (Mom and Daughter). Most of the people were around our age or young thirties but we later found out the Australian Mom was 63! The trekking wasn’t extremely intense but still badass of her to do it!
- On the tour we had two guides and a team of four porters that carried our clothes to the campsite and cooked for us. They were all younger Vietnamese men that were from the local area.
- The first day we did something like 8 km of trekking and hiking to get to the campsite with a stop at a cave for lunch in between. The “trekking” was similar to hiking but different in that the trail went through the jungle and wasn’t as clear as the normal trails you think of. If you didn’t know it was there, then you probably couldn’t tell it was a “trail” at all. The trekking had some elevation gain and decline but it wasn’t too intense. The thing that made it hard was keeping your balance. Your lower leg muscles were constantly flexed because you were stepping over jagged rocks covered in mud.
- We made it to the campsite around 3:30 PM. The campsite was on the bank of a river leaving a cave entrance. There was an awesome waterfall flowing out of the cave and we were surrounded by the jungle mountains.
- We spent an hour or so exploring the Tu Lan cave right at our campsite. We took a raft through the river into the cave and then went in deeper by foot. The tour usually swims through the river but everyone, including the guides, didn’t want to swim unless we had to because of the cold. I’m not sure how cold the water was but it was in the 50s outside. It got into the lower 40s at night.
- I think Rach said it first that walking through the caves was like walking on a different planet. It was pitch black other than all of our headlamps swaying around and there were crazy cave formations everywhere. The deeper we went into the cave, the hotter it got.
- We had a communal dinner at 6 PM and then spent the rest of the night hanging out by the fire. We had some local rice wine and our guide told us “once you start feeling happy, stop drinking”. They didn’t want us to get too wild. Everyone was pretty exhausted and we turned into our tents by 8 PM. They provided two sleeping bags for each of us but it was still pretty cold sleeping through the night. I got up to pee at 11 PM and got suprised by a rat eating the rice husks in our bucket “toilet”. I thought about it, but decided not to pee on it.
- We got an early start the second day, wakeup was at 6:30 AM. We had a nice breakfast and tried to get warm. This day didn’t have as much trekking but we explored three different caves. “Caving” involved climbing through some squeezes, crossing rivers, swimming in the caves, and screaming like a girl in the water. The water was really cold. It was cool to swim through a cave but it was a bit miserable being in the cold with soaking wet clothes. All of the caves were amazing, but by the last one all of the stalagmites and stalactites start to look like more of the same.
- The whole second day a hot shower sounded amazing and when we made it back to the Oxalis headquarters we were able to take one.
Overall, we had a great time on the whole jungle trek. We got to see some amazing things and were lucky to have a good group of people. Everyone got along well and we enjoyed chatting with the different people in our group. We actually made plans to have a Christmas dinner with some of the others in our group because we were all going to be in Hanoi!
Leaving Phong Nha we were a bit sad because we had a great time there and got a little comfortable. It was nice for us because with few restaurant options it made it easy to decide where to eat!
On to Hanoi!