If anyone has not seen the January edition of National Geographic, you should. Mark Jenkins and renowned photographer Carsten Peters visit the newly discovered Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park caves in central north Vietnam. The largest cave accessible to man at this date, there are a long windy network stretching as far as 200km in some parts.
In February, the crew of “Where 2 Next?“, a pilot television series about no-destination traveling, stopped in at Paradise Caves, part of the new Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park cave system that just opened to the public on December 24th, 2010. It was magical. Barely anyone there, we were of course, too rushed for time, and trying to take it all in was almost a futile effort. Besides the principal photography for the show I managed to shoot off a few stills to try to capture a rough perspective of the scale and beauty of this cave. Definitely a highlight of our trip for me, the Paradise Caves were unlike anything I have ever seen before in my life.
Paradise Cave (Thien Duong Cave) is newly-discovered cave in Quang Binh Province. Its length is 31 km. The widest spot is about 150 meters. It brings a fantastic beauty that make tourists in Vietnam Tourism praise
It was discovered in 2005 but after five years of mining, paving the way, building the up-and-down way, Paradise Cave is opened by Truong Thinh Group in September 2011.
It’s about 60km to the northwest from Dong Hoi City, Quang Binh, lies between Phong Nha – Ke Bang Forest, belongs to Son Trach Commune, Bo Trach District.
According to experts, Paradise is more beautiful and magnificent than Phong Nha and Tien son.
A local named Ho Khanh said that Paradise Cave was discovered and attracted the attention of many scientists, explorers, international community, tourists in Vietnam travel.
Mouth of Paradise Cave – Vietnam
The British Cave Research Association (PCRA) organized to explore and published it. It’s 31.4 km in length, width varies from 30 to 100 meters.
The largest spot is 150 meters height from the bottom up ceiling of about 60 meters.
Dr. Howard Limbert, a member of PCRA said that it may be the longest dry cave in Asia.
It’s about 7km from Ho Chi Minh Highway (West Branch) to the Km16. Over 6km of the way is quite flat on the smooth ground land, under the canopy layer of forests with the blowing cool wind. But there is a road which far 300m from the cave, tourists in Vietnam travel must climb across the side of sharp cat-ears stones
These photos were taken while I was shooting the pilot episodes for the new Travel show “Where 2 Next” in Vietnam. Visit the W2N blog here: www.where2nexttv.wordpress.com
Son Doong Cave, a cave belongs to the Phong Nha-Ke Bang grotto system in central Quang Binh Province, has been discovered to be the biggest in the world.
Son Doong cave, discovered by a local 18 years ago, is more than 200 meters wide, 150 meters high, and at least 6.5 kilometers long, though the explorers said they were unable to explore it fully. Bristish explorers have recently discovered that So Dong is much larger than the world’s biggest known cave. The biggest section of Son Dong is five kilometers in length, 200 meters high and 150 meters wide, said Howard Limbirt of the British Cave Research Association team searching the area April 10-14, 2009. Son Dong is much larger than Deer Cave in Malaysia, currently considered the world’s largest, an explorer said (Deer is 90 meters wide, 100 meters high and 2 kilometers long). The Son Doong cave has replaced to take pole position as the world’s largest cave.
The Son Dong is situated below another cave in Phong Nha-Ke Bang, though its entry passage is very difficult to traverse. The exploration team said they had set foot on just 6.5 kilometers along the cave, as there is a large amount of fast flowing water inside Son Dong. It takes explorers six hours of walking through a 10 kilometer long forest path from Truong Son Highway to reach the mouth of Son Dong cave. The explorer added that the Quang Binh cave has beautiful stalactites and stalagmites that are not seen anywhere else.
Phong Nha-Ke Bang grotto system belongs to the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park. It is a limestone region of 2,000 square kilometers in Vietnam and borders another limestone area in Hin Nammo in Laos. When describing the newly-discovered cave, the team’s spokesman, Haward Limbirt, said that it was a thing of overwhelming beauty and grandeur. He added that each grotto has its own beauty, but he is impressed by Ca Xai. This cave is near the Vietnam-Laos border. It is very deep and has a big lake inside. Explorers measured the depth of this lake, but they had only 200m of rope and the end didn’t reach the lake bed.
The British team suggested to the local authorities not to develop Son Doong Cave as a tourism site immediately to preserve its natural beauty.
Hang Son Doong – World’s largest cave passage
Mist sweeps past the hills of Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, its 330 square miles set aside in 2001 to protect one of Asia’s largest cave systems. During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese soldiers hid in caves from U.S. air strikes. Bomb craters now serve as fishponds.
A jungle inside a cave? A roof collapse long ago in Hang Son Doong let in light; plants thickly followed. As “Sweeny” Sewell climbs to the surface, hikers struggle through the wryly named Garden of Edam.
Moss-slick boulders and a 30-foot drop test author Mark Jenkins at the forest-shrouded entrance to Hang Son Doong. “Even though these caves are huge, they’re practically invisible until you’re right in front of them,” Jenkins says. Hunters have found caves by spotting winds gusting from underground openings.
Going underground, expedition members enter Hang En, a cave tunneled out by the Rao Thuong River. Dwindling to a series of ponds during the dry months, the river can rise almost 300 feet during the flood season, covering the rocks where cavers stand.
A giant cave column swagged in flowstone towers over explorers swimming through the depths of Hang Ken, one of 20 new caves discovered last year in Vietnam.
Headroom shrinks in the middle of Hang En as cavers pass beneath a ceiling scalloped by eons of floodwater rushing past. The river shortly reemerges onto the surface, then burrows into Hang Son Doong after a few miles.
A half-mile block of 40-story buildings could fit inside this lit stretch of Hang Son Doong, which may be the world’s biggest subterranean passage.
Hang Son Doong’s airy chambers sprout life where light enters from above—a different world from the bare, cramped, pitch-black spaces familiar to most cavers. Ferns and other greenery colonize rimstone. In the jungles directly beneath roof openings, explorers have seen monkeys, snakes, and birds.
Rare cave pearls fill dried-out terrace pools near the Garden of Edam in Hang Son Doong. This unusually large collection of stone spheres formed drip by drip over the centuries as calcite crystals left behind by water layered themselves around grains of sand, enlarging over time.
A climber ascends a shaft of light in Loong Con, where humidity rises into cool air and forms clouds inside the cave.
The Park is considered a paradise for researchers and explorers of grottoes and caves and is the home to 140 families, 427 branches, and 751 species of precious plants
Beautiful Stalactites – Phong Nha Cave are formed by the deposition of calcium carbonate and other minerals, which is precipitated from mineralized water solutions over 4 million years ago
Recognition by UNESCO in 2003
Phong Nha – Ke Bang is a national park in the center of Quang Binh province in north-central Vietnam. It protects one of the world’s two largest karst regions with several hundred caves and grottoes. Its name derives from Phong Nha cave, the most beautiful one, with numerous fascinating rock formations, and Ke Bang forest. The plateau is probably one of the finest and most distinctive examples of a complex karst landform in Southeast Asia.
Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park was first nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998. The dossier submited to UNESCO was for the recognition of Phong Nha nature reserve as a world natural heritage under the name “Phong Nha Nature Reserve”. The reason given for the nomination was that this nature reserve satisfied the criteria of biodiversity, unique beauty and geodiversity (criteria I and iv).
It was recognized as a world natural heritage site at the UNESCO’s 27th general assembly session being held in Paris in June 30th – July 5th, 2003. At the session, delegates from over 160 member countries of UNESCO World Heritage Convention agreed to include Phong Nha-Ke Bang park and 30 others worldwide in the list of world heritage sites. Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park meets with criteria viiii in accordance with UNESCO’s appraisal scale since it displays an impressive amount of evidence of earth’s history and is a site of importance for increasing human understanding of the geologic, geomorphic and geo-chronological history of the region.
Physical features:
Criterion (viii): Phong Nha is part of a larger dissected plateau, which also encompasses the Ke Bang and Hin Namno karsts. The limestone incontinuously demonstrates the complexity interbedding with shales and sandstones. This, together with the capping of schists and apparent granites has led to a particularly distinctive topography.
Looking into the caves, you may recognize discrete episodic sequences of events, leaving behind various levels of fossil passages, formerly buried and now uncovered palaeokarst (karst from previous, perhaps very ancient, periods of solution); evidence of major changes in the routes of underground rivers; changes in the solutional regime; deposition and later re-solution of giant speleothems and unusual features such as sub-aerial stromatolites. The location and form of the caves suggest that they might owe much of their size and morphology to some as yet undetermined implications of the schists and granites which overlay the limestone. On the surface, there is a striking series of landscapes, ranging from deeply dissected ranges and plateaux to an immense polje. There is evidence of at least one period of hydrothermal activity in the evolution of this ancient mature karst system. The plateau is probably one of the finest and most distinctive examples of a complex karst landform in SE Asia.
Cultural heritage:
The oldest evidence of human occupation of the area are Neolithic axe heads and similar artefacts found in some of the caves. There are some relics of Ham Nghi King, a final King of the Nguyen dynasty before the French colonial period, at the Maria Mountain in the north of the Park. Currently the Arem, Ma Coong and Ruc ethnic groups live in two villages in the core zone of Phong Nha Ke – Bang National Park. Until 1962 these indigenous people lived in the forest in houses made of bamboo and leaves or in the caves, living from forest products and hunting. They used simple tools and their clothes were made from the bark of a toxic forest tree (Antiaris toxicaria) and lianas.
Since 1992 the Government of Vietnam has set up two new settlements for these 475 people, who are the two smallest ethnic groups in Vietnam. These people are familiar with a number of economically valuable species, especially precious timber such as Mun and Hue (Diospyros spp., Dalbergia rimosa), and oil-extraction from species such as Tau (Hopea hainanensis) and many medicinal plants. The Phong Nha Cave has long been a site of religious and touristic importance, with an old Cham Temple discovered in the cave and it was a site of worship in the ninth and tenth centuries. During the war with the USA the Phong Nha – Ke Bang forest and caves were a garrison and weapons store for the Vietnamese army.
Conservation value:
Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park is of high conservation value as one of the largest areas of intact forest habitat remaining in Vietnam. As part of a continuous forest block with the neighbouring Him Namno Biodiversity Conservation Area in Laos it forms one of the largest areas of forest on limestone karst in Indochina. The presence of tall lowland forest, which is regionally threatened as a habitat type, in the National Park increases the area’s conservation value.
Tourist activities:
The number of tourists has increased dramatically since the park was listed in UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites. Tourism activities in the area are the responsibility of the Trading and Tourism Department of Quang Binh province, with 280 international standard rooms in the province and 8 vehicles with capacities of 4 to 15 seats for tourist transportation. The forest guards of Son Trach commune in Bo Trach district are placed on tourist security duty.
Quang Binh Province has invested into upgrading the Phong Nha-Ke Bang visitor site to turn it into one of Vietnam’s major tourist destinations.
Multiple eco-tourist projects have been licensed for development and the area is being heavily developed by the province to turn it into a major tourist site in Vietnam. Phong Nha Ke Bang is part of a tourism promotion program called: “Middle World Heritage Road” which includes the ancient capital of Hue, the Champa relics of My Son, the city of Hoi An, nha nhac and the Space of Gong Culture in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.
Tourist activities in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park are organized by local travel agencies and vary in form:
Tour for expedition of caves and grottos in boats and with professional cave expedtion means.
Ecotourism, discovering the florae and fauna in this national park in the Ke Bang Forest.
Mountain climbing: There are extreme sloping mountains here with a height of over 1,000 m, which is a real challenge for adventurous climbers
In order to facilitate the increasing flow of tourists to the site, the Dong Hoi Airport was constructed and is due to be operational at the end of 2008.
Phong Nha-Ke Bang, together with Ha Long Bay and Fanxipan of Vietnam, is listed as a candidate for 7 new world natural wonders vote. As of February 12, 2008 it ranked 10th in the voting list
In summary, Phong Nha displays an impressive amount of evidence of earth’s history. It is a site of very great importance for increasing our understanding of the geologic, geomorphic and geo-chronological history of the region.
