Paradise Cave

We had a great day today. We went to two of the caves in the Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park. Both very different. The photo is from Paradise cave which was an absolutely massive cave with crazy stalactites and stalagmites. You can walk 1km into the cave without a guide but it goes much deeper - to about 7km or more. The largest cave in the world is in this National Park - its called Son Doong and they only allow a few hundred tourists a year access at 3,000 USD a pop! This cave was plenty big enough but as with these things, the photos never do it justice ... it was pretty amazing. All this was only discovered in 2005 and has only been open to the public a few years.

The next cave was called Dark Cave and our excursion began with a zip wire over the river then a swim into the cave. Just the two of us and a guide. After the swim you walk about 1km into the cave through muddier and muddier and smaller and darker walkways, wearing just swimwear and a hardhat with head torch. While walking the guide is pointing out fossils, rock formations, bats and rather large spiders! Its quite a tricky walk at times and as we go further we do a couple of mud slides and have a mud bath up to our necks ... and this isn't just muddy water, its thick gloopy mud. We turn our torches off for a bit so we're in complete darkness ... eerie. Next we make our way back towards the entrance and have a wash off in a pool. Then a swim of about 50m then torches off again to swim back. All finished off by a kayak ride and more zip wires over the river ... fun.

Haiku
Subterranean majesty
A secret universe
Swallows us whole