Phong Nha-ke Bang - Caving In

(Featuring our special caves correspondent, Mark!)

Caves are cool.

They did it with Westworld. They did it with Star Trek. They tried to do it with Power Rangers and they failed miserably with The Mummy. And now somehow Mark has managed to take something dreary, dormant and rocky (they also did it with Rocky) and successfully reboot it into actual entertainment.

I can't give Mark all the credit however. I gave him full credit for our last group caving excursion to Carlsbad Caverns someplace in the USA (I forget exactly where, my repression techniques are working), and it was a consequence of this experience that I approached the caves at Phong Nha-ke Bang with trepidation.

Credit here though must also go to Phong Nha Discovery Tours, the facilitators of our tour of the Paradise and Dark caves on Day 1. There's a certain ambience to organised tours in Vietnam; an enjoyable, ramshackle mania that makes it feel as though they just discovered these caves last week and so quickly cobbled together a visitors centre from banana leaves and bamboo and diverted the local bus service to ferry people to it. If we could actually understand the words the guides are frequently yelling at one other, perhaps comparing their running tallies of tourist fatalities, it would certainly take something away from the experience.

Also want to give props to our main man Kris, the assigned guide for the day, who maintained an exiteable aura throughout the day, snapping pictures of the group and mixing jokes with fact (edutainment?) as he taught us some Vietnamese geography and history.

As we travelled in our bus through the jungle on Victory Road, a key transport route during the American war, he explained to us how Vietnam was shaped like a letter S (debatable, but I see it) or, alternatively, like a woman (perhaps, after you've had a few drinks and imagining the woman doing a particularly painful yoga pose). Expanding upon his analogy further, Kris explained how as we were now in the approximate middle of the country, Phong Nha-ke Bang could be considered the 'sexy bits'.

Keen to capture Vietnam's sexy bits on film, Mark had ensured his camera was thoroughly charged, fitted his other Go-Pro-like action-cam into its waterproof casing and ensured memory card capacity by uploading all previous pictures to his portable hard drive. In fairness, he did this every day, but feels most pertinent to mention here.

We briefly stopped for the pre-show that was Eight Ladies Cave, less a cave more a shrine built into a naturally-formed cubby-hole, which Mark attended cosplaying as one of the titular ladies. We then proceeded to the first feature presentation; Paradise Cave. Whilst a respectable effort, this cave was very much from the 2001 Tim Burton Planet of the Apes school of reboots; too similar to the original in some ways (flashbacks of Carlsbad), too different in others (had to ascend a winding slippery slope to get there) and with an ending that was somehow both a retread and frustrating in it's own right (back up the stairs we came down).

For some genuine geological commentary, I pass you to our special caves-correspondent, Mark:

"It was aethetically very pleasing, well illuminated, and not garish. The variations of stalactites and stalacmites, their shape and sculpture, particularly notable. The overall scale of the place was breathtaking. There aren't many geology jokes."

Thank-you Mark.

We then travelled fifteen minutes to the Dark Cave, where we were first given lunch. This consisted of piles of meat and rice in massive wicker baskets that brought to mind the dustbin-lid presentation style of Reds Barbecue, and contained similar quantities of food. Having consumed a heavy meal, we recalled the rule that you should only swim within two hours of eating, so headed to the waterside without delay.

The fastest route was via zipline. I was nervous as I'm not a fan of jumping off ledges at heights that would kill me were it not for apparatus I haven't fitted myself, don't fully comprehend and haven't examined the warranty for, but Woody was in the queue in front of me and his survival of the experience gave me faith. Mark slightly exceeded the weight requirements for the zipline, invalidating both the attraction's insurance policy, his personal travel insurance policy and endangering both his life and all those that might follow him, so I made sure he was in the queue behind me.

Upon touchdown I agreed the zipline had been exhilerating, safe in the knowledge we wouldn't have to go on one again. We walked to the water where there were some boats waiting to be told we would have to swim. We swam toward a nearby cave mouth and a small jetty poking out the front. Woody enjoyed ascending the jetty ladder so much he decided to slip and fall back into the water just so he could have a second go.

We then walked single-file into the Dark Cave, named genuinely for its darkness. We were each wearing helmets with lights attached, these being our only source of illumination. As the passageway became gradually narrower the floor underfoot became muddier, eventually culminating in a large pool of mud that we all waded into. It was doing that Dead Sea shtick where you could naturally float on the surface and we were told the mud was good for our skin, but then they always say and I've yet to see Boots start stocking big tubs of mud in place of Oil of Olay.

After walking through mud to mud and coating ourselves in said mud, we were rather muddy. On our exit from the cave we were invited to go down a mudslide, with the promise this would make us briefly muddier but conclude in a clean water pool in which we could wash-off the magic regenerative exfoliating goop.

Once outside we had the opportunity to kayak once more, this time in a three-way arrangement whereby Woody and I ruled as co-Kings with Mark as our shared Queen. Basically we rowed, whilst Mark took pictures. We ended up back at the visitors centre, where Mark & Woody raced on a mini-zipline (I'd had quite enough of that) followed by a few rum & cokes in the bar and Mark had a staring contest with a fire-ant. In all, an excellent afternoon that thoroughly restored 'cave' from its standing as an occasional curse-word to that which invokes open-minded intrigue. This was Rise of The Planet of the Apes style rebootery ; I would queue-up for the sequel and even buy the Blu-ray.

Then the next day happened. We went on a lovely boat trip into a huge cave and all was well and epic and wow but then Mark said we'd be going up a mountain to a temple. 'Brilliant' we thought, so did. The climb was tough-going, steep and in sweltering heat but the views were phenomenal. Alas, however, when we reached the summit there was no temple, only cave. An okay cave, but hardly a good cave. Think War for the Planet of the Apes; acceptable I guess, but that'll do.

This sort of duplicitous ploy is precisely what gives caves a bad name and Mark's mislead why the world looks down on geological professions with scorn. With only the descent then a late, hot, 90-minute bus journey then 4-hour train journey to look forward to today, this was a monumental letdown. Still I'll say one thing for caves, after a humid sweaty climb in the baking Vietnamese climate they have a singular redeeming feature:

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