Quang Binh is a narrow land in central of Vietnam. The climate in here is relatively unfavorable for agriculture development because this province faces a lot of dangerous storms every year. Luckily, this place is famous for many wonderful natural landscapes that you can’t miss during the trip to Quang Binh province. Before we took a trip to Quang Binh province, we read much information about tourism destinations in here. Our group decided to visit Paradise cave as the first stop on the trip.
It deserves to the title “the kingdom of caves”, Quang Binh featured on the S-shaped land of Viet Nam with enormous and mysterious caves. It’s really hard to describe to the fairytale beauty of this place.
When we went inside this cave, the first impression to us is exciting feeling with spectacular and charming creation of nature.
TERM 1: On the way getting access to Paradise cave.
Our group including my girlfriend came to Quang Binh province in July when temperature peaked 42 degree. We paid a visit to Paradise cave as a big group tour, and an English tour guide went together with us. Because this was the first time in Quang Binh, we were really excited for the trip.
We departed pretty early at 6 am. The bus of travel agency picked up in time so that we felt satisfied with service of company. On the way to Paradise cave, our bus went along the legendary road “Truong Son Road”. From introductions of tour guide, we knew a lot of heroic stories behind this road in Viet Nam War. It’s used to play an important road in supplying aids to battlefield, and nowadays it becomes red marker marked for glorious and heroic Vietnamese peoples.
Truong Son in this day is separated into two ways “Truong Son Dong” and “Truong Son Tay”. In order to get access to Paradise cave, we went along Truong Son Tay road. This road was painted with a white line. If we keep going this road, we will head to Phong Nha- Ke Bang national park. Two sides are bushy tropical forests. What a beautiful natural view! We could image that a fantastic was waiting for us. Finally, we saw an advertisement board “Welcome to Paradise cave”, we got more excited to discover this cave as soon as possible. However, we had to move more 6km to arrive at Paradise cave. Because we came to Quang Binh province at summer holidays, we got stuck at long crowed vehicles. Someone could not stand sothat they decided to walk in 6km.
(Son river – Phong Nha cave tour)
We finally reached Paradise cave but you had about 2km to the entrance of cave. We decided to walk instead of using electric cars. We really got a perfect decision because we had a chance to hear many bird’s voices and natural feeling on the way to Paradise cave. Someone in our group tour were very tired, they sat on the stones and took a deep breath after a long walking. We should motivate them to all of us can visit this cave together.
( Paradise cave – Phong Nha and paradise cave tour)
We took first steps on the entrance of cave. We could feel the cool air from the cave. We entered inside the cave by a small gully which is just fit for a person. Finally, we were inside Paradise cave with overwhelmed impression. Our group followed tour guide as a line to go across a tiny wooden-bridge. When we explored deeper, the space of cave was getting more and more beautiful, splendid, gorgeous and fanciful. A lot of gigantic stalactites with enormous shapes and mixed quartz created sparking phosphorescent light. The deeper we went inside, the more diverse stalactites and stalagmites with unique, colorful stones and breast strange shapes, evoking the soaring imagination viewership.
Immersing themselves into the mystic scene of stalactites, tourists could erase concerns of daily life and feel the creation of miracle natural hands gave to Paradise cave a specific colors and a masterpiece of nature. According to introduction from tour guide, we knew more ridiculous names of rosins inside the cave. Truly, from my imagination, I can see a Maria Statue holding a baby, a Royal Palace of Kings with beautiful decorations such as unicorn, phoenix and sparrow, some rosins have unique shapes which were similar to a Buddha Statue or a gorgeous veil of Princess’s bed room. What a natural masterpiece!
We still enjoyed the cave but we weren’t expected that we just finished 1 km of the cave. We really felt regretful because we wanted to explore hidden mystery of the cave. Our tour guide gave to us headed flashlight for the trip to discover other 7 km inside the cave. Amazing trip was waiting for us to conquer.
TERM 2: Lost in magic world
After abandoning the wooden bridge behind, we continued exploring 7km of the cave. In the front of our eyes is a long path with a dark color. Thanks to help of tour guide, we completed the first 500m of the cave easily with tubular, high, wide, open and flat caves. In here, we could encounter many giant stalactites mixing with mineral sand quartz. The deeper we went inside, the more diverse stalactites with unique stalagmites, colorful stones and strange shape. During walking time, we also hear our tour guide introducing the history of formation and development of the cave. We were really in a different world which is just for angels.
Along with the tour guide, we kept going inside the cave. We noticed on the cave’s ceiling, these stalactites look like a thousand of knifes going down to our head. It was really scared but beautiful. We had to walk carefully in order to keep body without touching many rosin in the cave.
Sometime, we saw a huge stalactite lasted from ceiling to bottom of the cave. It made me think about a long hair of my mother. Some stalactites have different colors such as red, blue, black, orange, grey which were located together. Because human imagination is very abundant, we can think any shapes we want. We never expected that this cave was so amazing like this.
Few coming up next meters, our tour guide told us to keep silent. We didn’t understand why we had to do that. Suddenly, we were still watching masterpieces of natural creation, we were startled to hear a light and pure sound as someone were playing guitar. It turned out our tour guide was clawed to a strange stalactite. The cool air blew from outside created a fairy tone that we were lucky people who could hear this voice.
We arrived at the next site of the cave with a modern name “The Stadium”. This is the largest place with 80 meters in height and 120 meters in width. We hold a small competition to relieve stressful feeling after a long walking. All of us run together to the finish line. What a strange competition.
We continued to explore deeper the cave by kayak boats. We had to overcome 100 meters via a small spring with a lot of impediments like stalactites, stones and some hard water lanes. Finally, we went over 2km of this way. All of us were full of mud. However, it wasn’t the most difficult place. We had to face 1km left during the trip.
Because the space inside the cave is very dark so we used the head flashlight to find the way. After 500 meters, we finally saw the light of sun. We were really excited, and we wanted to jump up to nowhere place after a long but interesting trip. We felt as we saw the sunlight in the first time of my life.
This is the last destination of the cave. It called “The well of sun”. We were lucky to be here. We had about 20 minutes to take memorial photos before leaving. We enjoyed the food that we brought with us and went back by the same way.
It was really a perfect trip but I still felt regretful. I wished I could stay longer. In summary, there were nothing to say about this trip except one word “WONDERFUL”.
Tags: Dong Hoi to Phong Nha, Phong Nha cave tour, Phong Nha caves tour, Hoi An to Dong Hoi, Phong Nha cave tour
August 22, 2016
