Solo Travel: Phong Nha - Camping in a Cave

Tim had COVID and, of course, stopped traveling and focused on allowing his body to rest and get well again. With that, I continuously tested negative for COVID and felt fine - apart from being tired from traveling. We had scheduled a cave camping overnight for the next week, and by the weekend it looked like Tim was feeling better. He encouraged me to travel solo to enjoy the cave adventure, so I did.

The first part of the adventure was getting there. The Vietnamese coast is a beautiful coast, and they have a train running the entire length of the country. It is very popular to take overnight trains instead of flying. Given that, I bought a train ticket to go from nearby Da Nang to Dong Hoi - about a 5-hour train journey. Neither where I was starting nor ending, so I would be connected by hour-long taxi rides to get to each city. This turned it into a full-day adventure.

Phong Nha National Park

Trains

The train was quite an experience. First, I needed to get lunch upon arrival at the train station, or really buy enough snacks for my journey. The store is all freshly-made snacks that are packaged in plastic, but none of them were familiar to me because they are Southeast Asian snacks. I was excited by this and bought a bunch of different types of snacks, knowing that some would be great and others wouldn’t. Using Google Translate, I kept asking the shop owner which he would recommend and which were not spicy (and had no garlic). Eventually, I had a little list. He also sold Oreos and Snickers, which were about 5x the price of everything else. I got a Snickers as a treat for myself.

The train only has two classes: a sleeper car (first class) and seats (second class). I was seated in the 2nd class with just a seat. There was a good mix of locals and tourists on the train in the car. However, I immediately noticed that there was no climate control while the train was moving, so the car got quite hot. Outside was warmer, so the passengers kept the windows closed and shades drawn to keep the cool. I did get to peak out to see the beautiful coast going by though. After Hue, the next tourist stop on the train and a popular day trip, almost all tourists left. It was me, one family, and a train of local Vietnamese. It was really exciting, as I saw how the locals actually travel.

As soon as many tourists left, the locals moved into the empty seats scattered around the train. Given the heat, many people took their shoes off and were napping. Almost everyone under 40 years old was on a phone, watching videos. (The train did not have power outlets, wifi, or air conditioning.) At a future stop, if someone had the seat occupied by someone, they would move politely. However, everyone knew the car would not fill up and no one seemed worried. Even though many people traveled together, almost no one spoke. However, there was a card game that started at the other end of the train. It was amazing to watch the atmosphere shift in this space. For me, I watched out the window and eventually took my computer out to write.

Hang En Cave - An Overnight Tour

The next day was the cave tour. Oxalis Adventures is a company that takes tourists into Phong Na National Park to camp in the large limestone caves in the park. They run an amazing operation and are very organized, I would highly recommend them in the future.

We had booked the Hang En Cave tour, an overnight cave camping trip. In the morning, the 15-person group was briefed about what the trip would hold, and we set off on a bus trip of 45 minutes. We drove through the country with cows and pasture and eventually were in rolling hills with tall trees surrounding us. The trees felt like a combination of jungle and temperate rainforest, as it is central Vietnam, which stays warm but can still vary in temperature. We were dropped off for the hike.

The multi-hour hike led down a moderate path to a village where we had lunch. Then we would drop down a steep hill to the river bed, then hike along the riverbed to the cave entrance. The whole thing took about 3 hours and was a moderate, short hike if you were in shape. Porters with our food and supplies got out ahead of us and essentially ran down, as porters always walk substantially faster than tourists!

The whole area of Phong Nha was made into a national park when the caves were discovered and popularized. The local people were living off the grid in the area and still continued to live there. They knew how to live off the land in small farm communities, taking advantage of solar power and amenities in town as needed (like the hospital). As typical in Vietnam, all the buildings are built on stilts to minimize rain and water damage from heavy rains, this village being no different. When there is severe flooding, the people move higher in the hills with the animals, coming back after the water has left to rebuild. That was how people in this area lived for generations, and the government was generally moving people to towns to separate the farming areas from the parks. This had some success, and some people really wanted to stay - of course, creating tension between the government and local communities.

In the 1990s, a local man decided to move his family back into Phong Nha Park and live in the area. Since then, the community has grown to about 60 people. Oxalis has a special relationship with the community, which allows them to walk through the village and explain the history of their village, as well as host lunches daily for the tour groups coming through below the buildings. We walked through, sat underneath one building to eat an amazing lunch, and used the outhouse there.

After lunch, we continued walking down to the riverbed. Along the way, we were told to wear long pants (tucked into your socks) and long sleeve shifts, as leeches would hitchhike on your shoes and snake their way up looking for a snack. Everyone was looking for leeches the whole time, and almost everyone had one on them at some point or another. Besides that, we heard lots of birds and just generally chatted. It was truly a beautiful trail.

The riverbed was an amazing, majestic scene itself also. We walk along the side, with smooth rocks, tall grasses, and trees popping out. The whole thing was just amazing. And we saw some buffalo down at the river also! I took lots of photos and it all was quite serene.

Once at the cave entrance, it was incredible. The cave inside is huge - multiple stories high. It is carved by water erosion from a single piece of limestone. The sides are smooth and majestic, soaring high above you and where your light can shine. The entrance has a ton of trees and vegetation so that when you are inside the cave you look up to a silhouette of beautiful trees and foliage against a bright sky.

Within the caves, every tent is set up on a platform, the dining area separate, the staff and porters sleeping area, and the outhouse areas split by gender. Next to the tents is a pond where we all went swimming, enjoying the serene space. We arrived around 4 pm, went for a swim, and hung out. At 6:30 or so they served dinner.

Dinner here was some of the best food I had in Vietnam, and Vietnam is a place for high-quality food. It included seafood, meat, veggies, everything. It was truly just incredible. We ate and ate, family style. The whole group was really nice so we just chatted and hung out.

That night I had trouble getting my contact out of my right eye. I thought it was over the pupil and spent a long time digging in my eye for it. Finally, I let the guides know, and the two guides and I just sat and tried to get it out and find it. They had a very extensive first-aid kit, which included eye droppers and a mirror. I pulled my eyelid up to find it hiding there and got it how. However, during that time the three of us chatted about their lives, being in Vietnam, how COVID had impacted their lives, and what it was like to be a guide. It was one of the most enriching conversations I had in the country, and I felt really connected to them. Then we joined the group around a bonfire and continued chatting.

That night, I woke up to go to the bathroom and was just struck by the beauty and silence of the space. The cave is huge and dark, yet moonlight reflects in to create amazing shapes on the sides. You can also hear (and sometimes) see the bats flying around the cave at times. Being alone, just sitting and watching the cave, was serene. My eyes adjusted and I saw more nuances in the cave wall patterns. The quiet wraps around you, holding you close and also making you feel tiny in the space simultaneously. It felt like moving an inch would break the bewitching spell. It feels similar to me when I’m watching a dark sky of stars or any other magnificent landscape. It is also a feeling that I seek, to be fully present in the space and soak in the energy it has to offer. This space was no different and equally as incredible.

The next morning we explored the cave! The cave itself has two parts: the area we slept in (the front, where water flows in) and the back area, which was larger and had tall walls with moss growing on them. Walking to the back, where the water flows out, was like walking into Jurassic Park again. It was big, magnificent, and overwhelmingly beautiful. The sand had these incredible little patterns, balanced delicately. If you touched it then it would just disappear.

In between these two areas is a high part that has fossils and lets in very little light. The walls are from one block of limestone, carved by the massive flooding in the area over long periods of time (geological time, really). So this rock has fossils in a line - the line of when they were all captured in the soil at the same time. You can then see where the rock moves or shifts or breaks apart because the line of fossils shifts with it. I had never seen anything this clear in terms of fossil creation and the change of the land. It was truly incredible to see this so clearly. The photos do not do it justice.

In this area, we also turned our lights out and stood in silence for several minutes. Being in complete darkness and in complete quiet is unique. How often are you actually in this type of area these days? With cell phones and lights and people noise? It is a bit spooky, but also really gets you into your element. Another memorable experience on this two-day trip.

We had a late brunch in the cave and then hiked back up to the bus. The hike up was up a steep hill, essentially about 2 hours of a stair master. I had been incredibly out of shape for my own body after taking several days off and just watching TV in the hotel when Tim got sick. I was a bit nervous and focused on a sustainable pace up the hill. Not getting ahead of my own breath to ensure a slow but steady pace, as I learned on Kilimanjaro. It worked, and I felt accomplished in starting to manage my own boundaries with my body and hiking.

An Eel & A Train

We got back to the tour company around 3 or 4 pm. I was transported to my hotel and had a nice eel dinner. In Vietnam, they have a huge amount of freshwater areas - mainly around rice fields and irrigation. There’s marine life that lives in this water and are mainstays in the Viet diet. That night, I enjoyed a nice dinner stew cooked around the freshwater eel. This marked the second time I ate eel in Vietnam!

The next day I took an early train to Hue - about 3 hours. This time, I booked a bed in a sleeper car - knowing it had outlets and air conditioning. My train left at 7:30 am and arrived in Hue at about 10:30 am, meaning that I got up at 5 am to get there and catch the train. My train car itself was empty for the ride, which was perfect. I watched the landscape go by - rice fields, towns, houses, trees, and repeat. Because of the empty car, I used all the pillows to prop me up and leisurely watch (and take photos)!