On our way heading up North, we made a quick stop (2nights) in Dong Hoi to explore Phong Nha Ke Bang National Park after reading all the raves about the Sơn Đoòng Cave, the biggest cave on the planet that had been discovered by a local a few years ago. Since it’s quite exclusive and requires booking very well in advance (one-week all inclusive guided tour, 1,5 years waiting time), we chose to visit Paradise Cave and explore the National Park in Phong Nha instead.
Phong Nha village is about an hour moped-ride from Dong Hoi airport, about 50km away. We could have had ourselves picked up by our hosts, but decided renting a bike would give us mobility and allow us to see more of the regional countryside that is still quite untouched by the outer world. It was worth it. The route was quite straight-forward as there was only 2 turns to make with proper street signes, and the road was fairly well maintained, for Vietnamese standards, with very few potholes. We drove mostly through rice fields with the exceptions of a couple houses and a few cafés along the road. It became real interesting once the first sight of mountainous scenery appreared. Before we knew it, we arrived in Son Trach village, ideally located along the Con River, where we spent our nights. As mentioned before, this part of Vietnam has remained quite untouched by mass tourism so everything is quite basic in this town. It has a few hostels, a couple restaurants, one or two bars, one ATM and that’s about it. There’s no super markets or convinient stores, if you need anything other than shampoos and softdrinks, my bet is you need to go back to Dong Hoi. The simpleness of it all was actually the reason we dicided not to stay longer, but turned out to be the thing we liked the most. The air was very clean, the people were very warm and helpful, and the mountainous scenery around was magnificent. It was also very quiet in general, so quiet that you could hear the cracking of the trees when someone step on them. Mostly, we only heard the birds singing, children playing and dogs barking ;-). It was strange, but spending a couple of days over there really brought us back to basic. And we loved it. It’s not one of our most favorite spots in Vietnam due to the modest quality of the foods and accommodations, but it’s definitely a place we would come back to explore more.
On our search for a proper bed, we came across “Jungle Boss homestay”, run by Dzung and his (then expecting) wife and their little son. Their “home” is a rice field apart from the main road so it was a little difficult for us to find. But people didn’t invent cell phones for no reason ;-). On one of the nights we had dinner, cooked by his wife, with his family and other homestay guests in their living room (don’t remember how much we paid for it but it wasn’t much). It was fun and the foods were way better than what we had in one of the restaurants in the village. We learnt that Dzung had been helping other locals build up the homestay network for them to have an extra incomes and for tourists to have better, more authentic choices of accommodation. He’s also very active, along with other villagers, in protesting against the government plan of building the cable car network into the Son Doong Cave in order to make it accessible for the mass public, which would destroy its uniqueness and the eco tourism currently built around it. If only people in other parts of Vietnam would also think this way.
We actually booked two nights at “Jungle Boss Homestay” but our confirmation came a little late so we had to move to another homestay for the second night (they had only 3 rooms for rent in total).
In our short stay there, we chose to visit Paradise Cave, one of UNESCO’s Heritage Sites that we could easily access by our bikes (Phong Nha cave requires a boat ride and Hang En cave a two-day hike). The whole cave is 31 km long but only the first few kilometers have been explored. From the parking lot, it’s a short walk and a short hike up to the cave’s entrance. From there, you start to descend into the cave along established staircases which take you, at most, 1 kilometer into the dimly-lit spectacle. After adjusting our eyes, we could really admire the thrilling limestone formation of our mother nature.
On the way back from Paradise Cave we stopped for lunchbreak at Nuoc Moc river stream, in the middle of the jungle surrounded by Karst mountains. It was truly a lovely place where you can take a dip in the crystal clear water, order sticky rice with grilled chicken for lunch, or simply lay on your back and rest.
Other “discovery” in the area.
