Spectacular speleothems and terrible taxidermy

Phong Nha national park is a geologist's heaven and a perfect place to spend my birthday.

We got dropped off at our accommodation, Carambola Bungalow, where we were staying in a little individual stilt house right by the river. It was really quaint and we had dinner outside in the central garden area.

We’d rung ahead and booked a tour of Paradise Cave and Dark Cave for my birthday so the next morning we were picked up by our tour guide and taken to the botanical gardens as our first stop. On the way, the guide explained that we would see various animals including snakes, monkeys and peacocks. What she failed to mention was that most of these would be stuffed, and badly at that! It took all my effort not to cry with laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of it.

That said, we did see some live monkeys and peacocks on our walk to see a waterfall, which you could abseil down on a different adventure trip. For us though, it was back to the bus to continue to Paradise Cave.

From the entrance to the cave complex, we were driven by electric golf buggy to the bottom of the steps up to the cave. The cave was only discovered in 2003 by a local man who had gone for a walk in the jungle and noticed a cool breeze when he sat down for a rest. It was opened in 2005 and stretches back a whopping 31km, although tourists can only explore the first kilometre.

After climbing up a hundred or so steps, we entered the cave from the top and began to climb down into the cavern. One of the great things about the fact that the cave is newly discovered is that it has been well preserved and the features are well protected.

It’s not an exaggeration to say this cave is spectacular. I was literally spellbound for the half an hour walk to the end of the pathway by the magnificent stalagmite and stalactite sculptures that are just everywhere. The cave is really well lit too, using white and yellow lights and not coloured ones, which I’ve seen in other caves and make the whole thing look quite garish.

The cavern itself is huge (Phong Nha contains three of the world’s five biggest caves) and surprisingly empty, meaning you can take your time and not be rushed through by other tourists. Unfortunately our pictures can in no way do justice to this place, but here are a few to whet your appetite should you wish to come here!

On the way out, we were lucky enough to experience a moment of silence, with just the dripping of the water in the cave to be heard. It was such a contrast to our experience of Vietnam, which is a constant assault on the senses, and was the perfect end to our experience here.

After a quick birthday ice cream, it was back on the bus to go to our second cave, Dark Cave. We had a massive bbq lunch on arrival, which was absolutely delicious (it was shared between five before you start thinking our appetites have grown significantly out here!).

We got talking to three girls from Essex on the bus, who were kind enough to take photos of us in the cave, as we weren’t able to take our camera in. To get to the cave, you first go down a zipline to the entrance. This was fun, although the landing was pretty violent! The girl behind James ended up back in the middle of the zipline as the guy at the end failed to catch her! Luckily they were able to rescue her from the river below.

From the zipline, you had to swim a little way to the entrance of the cave and the water was freezing! From there we walked into the cave, using our head torches as, unsurprisingly, it was dark! The highlight of the Dark Cave is the mud bath at the end of the walk in, followed by a nice swim in a clear pool to clean off.

To get back to the mainland, we had to kayak a short way back up river. From there, there are two smaller ziplines where you drop into the river. I had a go once but chickened out of the second time as it was higher and my hands were wet so I was scared I’d slip off. This did actually happen to a girl later on so I was pleased I’d made the right choice!

What was fascinating here was the number and sheer size of the butterflies that were swarming around us. They were absolutely huge, like the size of a small bird. It was mating season so they were all trying to show off to their mates, which was incredible to watch. We were then treated to some free rum and coke, which was absolutely perfect for me!

With the tour at an end, we were dropped back at our accommodation, before going for a walk into town. We hadn’t appreciated quite how far it was and probably should have cycled, but then we wouldn’t have bumped into a group of adorable children, who just wanted to high five us and kept asking us to buy them candy.

We also saw lots of fires and sweets on the roadside, as it was the 15th day of the lunar month (full moon). Every 1st and 15th day of the lunar month, the Vietnamese burn things to send to their ancestors to help them in the other life. It was interesting to see, if not a little smoky!

On our way to dinner, we bumped into the three girls from the cave trip so ended up having dinner with them at a lovely vegetarian restaurant in the centre of town. From there, they went to get the night bus to Hanoi and we wandered back to our bungalow. Overall a very memorable and enjoyable birthday.

We’d arranged to get the night bus the following day, so had a whole day to kill. We decided to walk to Phong Nha cave, which according to Google Maps, was about half an hour walk up the road. Again, we probably should have cycled as it was really hot! But we got a good view of the karst hills along the way.

What we didn’t realise is that you can’t actually get to the cave from here, instead you have to get a boat from the centre of town up the river. So we turned round and walked back again, stopping at a little hostel on the way for some lovely cold water and a chill out in a hammock.

Back at the bungalow, this time we decided to cycle to town, where we grabbed some lunch and jumped in a boat with 11 other people to travel back up river to where we’d just come from! Just before the entrance, the boat’s engine was turned off and the two boat men paddled us in, which was much more peaceful and a lovely way to see the cave’s formations. While not quite as spectacular as Paradise Cave, it was still quite serene.

Just before the entrance, we were dropped off and able to walk around some of the stalagmites before heading back out to get on the boat. This again was fascinating, although spoilt slightly by the two British tourists who thought it was OK to light up cigarettes in the cave. Luckily the security guards told them to put them out.

On the way back to town, we passed many people on boats fishing or gathering river weed using two giant sticks, like chopsticks. We cycled back to our accommodation to chill out by the river until our transfer to the night bus. James took a dip in the river, before we spent some time playing with two local girls.

Our “peaceful” evening was somewhat shattered by the broadcasting of a church service from across the river, which included a lot of rather bad singing by the congregation, and a large bonfire from a neighbour down the road which smoked us out quite a bit.

Despite this, we had a tasty dinner before boarding the night bus for Hanoi. We were lucky to get two top bunks, as it’s normal for the bus companies to oversell tickets, with the Vietnamese people paying less to sleep in the aisle. Again, despite the small bunks, we slept relatively well and arrived in Hanoi at 5am the next morning, arriving an hour early, having left an hour late!