Phong Nha-Ke Bang national park is situated in north central Vietnam and has been listed as a Unesco world heritage site since 2003. It contains part of the oldest karst mountains in Asia which formed over 400 million years ago, the karst area stretches over to Laos and is one of the largest karst areas in the world, containing hundreds of caves and grottoes, subterranean rivers and rare flora and fauna.

Phong Nha Town

We arrive in Phong Nha town in the scorching afternoon after a very pleasant scenic ride through the national park. We ride a few circuits of the main street to get our bearings and pull up infront of a decent looking cafe for lunch. As we dismount from our bikes, we immediately get approached by a local man inviting us to stay in his hostel dorm – it was a polite but firm ‘no thanks’ from us (private rooms only please!). Taking a look around the main street we can see that this man’s tactic for custom could easily work here as we are quite taken aback to the number of backpackers walking around – we hadn’t seen any for several days during our ride through northern central Vietnam, so it was a little surreal to see so many suddenly. Something tells us while still off the beaten track, we are in a very aesthetically and geographically interesting spot…

First things first; we enter the cafe and order some food and as we’re waiting check our iPhones and Booking.com/TripAdvisor.com for places to stay. Eddie spotted a few potential places and we settled on Phong Nha Discovery hotel which was a stones throw from the cafe we’re in – meant to be I think!

After lunch we ride up to the hotel and check in (too easy!) then shower up and decide to go for a little walk around the place. It was still blistering hot so after 10 minutes walking in the sun we duck into a very pleasant straw hut cafe for shelter and an icy cold drink. Wow it’s hot – we check and reports say 37 degrees Celsius with 90% humidity, oh my! After cooling down in the cafe we decide on retreating back to the hotel. That evening it’s a little cooler and so we head out to bamboo cafe which was very near our hotel. We order dinner (pretty good – fried rice dishes and beer), then quickly head back to the hotel and into the cool air conditioned room – time for an early night, something about the heat is exhausting!

Dark Cave

We woke quite early the next morning as we wanted to get to the dark cave as early as possible – we were told that lots of tourist busses descend in the afternoon so for couples an early admission is advised to avoid long queues.

After an early breakfast we hop on our bikes and it was about a 15 minute ride to the cave. We bought tickets at the counter and then we got given a life jacket, a helmet with a light and got strapped in to a harness. It all happened very fast and we were then quickly ushered into a building and begin climbing stairs… It’s about this point that I realise that we will be harnessed onto a zip line at the top of the building and that is the only entrance to the dark cave. Oh dear, my first zip line – I’m scared! Eddie thinks it’s pretty funny but is very reassuring. I walk up to the ledge and get strapped to the zip line; here goes nothing…! I pass over tree conopys and building rooftops and a river but really it’s all over very quickly and actually quite thrilling. Phew!

After the zip line arrival we join a group of around 20 other tourists that are waiting for us. Our guide tells us to all jump into a river in order to access the cave entrance – wow, very cold water! We’re only in the river for five minutes or so before climbing out again at the cave opening.

We walk through the cave and it’s very dark (as the name promised) with a guide leading the way and the torches on our helmets switched on, we can just about see where we’re going. There are lots of twists and turns and paths through small crevasses and the cave floor and walls are all covered in a slimey cool mud – this makes walking particularly slippery but it’s quite nice and cosy too – like being on the inside of a collapsed wet clay vase, I imagine. After walking and squelching our way through we finally reach the end point which is a mud bath and we hang out here for about fifteen minutes with the group before it’s time to return to the lake. We take almost the same path out of the cave although this route has a surprise small mud slide that we can shoot down, woohoo!

We arrive back to the cave opening and to the cold river but this time we are given kayaks to mess around on. We then notice that there is also a zip line across the river (with no harness) so we pull over to the river bank and disembark the kayak to give this a go. Eddie went first and made it look like a doodle, but having never attempted such an obstacle I was a  little eager and did it all wrong – I think I lasted about three seconds before getting thrown off and crashing into the water, body slamming my back on the water, whoops.  No harm done though, just a bruised ego!

We stayed on the river for a while, it would have been quite easy to spend the afternoon there but we decided to dry off and press on to the botanical gardens.

Botanical Gardens

From the dark cave, we jumped back on our bikes and rode for about another 10 minutes on the same road – then it was a left turn onto a smaller back road which, as well as being small and twisting, huge sections of the road were being resurfaced (flash back to my accident!). Thankfully no accidents for us this time but we did spot others in bother and so we got the chance to build up some good road karma. The first stop was to help a local man that was stranded with no petrol (he syphoned a small amount from Eddies full tank, thanked us and then headed home) and the second spot of bother was with a young Canadian couple whose hire scooter decided to stop working on them, not good! So we pulled over and came up with a plan to escort them as they rolled it to the botanical gardens where the could phone their hotel to get help.

We reached the botanical gardens and had lunch in the cafe while chatting away to our stranded buddies – they managed to phone the hotel and organised a rescue, phew!

After lunch we walked around the botanical gardens and we soon realised that the name was a little deceptive – while beautiful and natural it was more like rugged jungle than a manicured garden. Never the less, it was amazing as we followed the trail around we walked past a jungle lake, saw our first wild native langur monkey climbing in the tree tops and also walked down to a waterfall and swam at the bottom – the water was lovely and the perfect way to cool down after hot the jungle trek.

After all the excitement that day we decided the next day would be a well earned relaxing movie day! The heat is disabilitating unless inside a cool cave, so the hotel room and Netflix was the lazy but sensible option to keep cool.

Phong Nha Cave

When in Phong Nha, visiting Phong Nha cave is an absolute must! The ticket office is at the end of the Main Street so it was just a five minute stroll from our hotel and our bikes got the day off. We checked out the prices and decided to go by boat to the cave. We bought tickets, walked over to the boat docking area – there were no queues and no sooner had we sat down, we were moving off towards the cave.

We were pretty excited to be travelling by a traditional Vietnamese wooden boat – well, it was a modern version as it had an engine that chugged along the river as we took in the views. We spotted buffalo grazing on the river banks, children swimming, adults washing and one to two small traditional Vietnamese construction sites as we sailed along.

When we arrived at the cave the boat engine stopped and the two ladies directing the boat brought out two very long and thin oars that they then used to steer the boat – they stabbed the water using zig zag and circular motions which moved the boat at a slow but steady pace.

As we entered the cave we noticed this cave opening was the biggest we had seen – Eddie heard of some urban myth that this cave only got discovered in the 90’s as a local man got lost and happened upon it, and told the story to a geologist that was in the pub the same evening – perhaps that was true but it was hard to reconcile as the river leads straight to it and it’s very hard to miss the giant opening.

Inside the cave we could see vast ceilings of stalactites and the boat dodged around grand stalagmites that were all beautifully lit up and seem to stretched on far past where our boat could take us. After about 2o minutes of the magnificent scenes the boat turned around (only a certain portion of the cave is lit up and accessible for tourists) and we began our journey back. The journey back was a little different as the boat pulled up to a sandy area inside the cave where we disembarked and could walk around the cave and see the formations up close. As we walked around we realised we could take a path that would lead us out of the cave, which is where our boat was waiting for us to take us back up the river.

Early the next morning we were up and packed and ready to head on further through the stunning national park.