After our weekend in Ho Chi Minh City, we decided we wanted to explore some of the Vietnamese countryside. We’d seen that several blogs recommend central Vietnam for April, so we decided to check out Phong Nha. This region is known as the adventure capital because it is studded with large caves to explore, including the world’s largest cave, Hang Son Doong. Hang Son Doong requires a 7-day hiking trip that you have to book years in advance, but there are lots of easier-to-reach caves in the area that are also super impressive. We decided to use the Phong Nha Farmstay as our base, since it had been recommended to Patrick and Cassie by multiple people at their school. We booked a villa at the Farmstay and settled in for a few days in this beautiful country retreat.
Our first day there was overcast and we were tired from our big weekend in Ho Chi Minh City, so we mostly spent the day relaxing by the pool with a beer and a book. For our second day, we wanted to explore, so we borrowed bikes from the Farmstay and headed into town. It’s an easy ~10 km ride down country lanes and along the Con river. A great way to pass the morning!
From Phong Nha’s main boat dock it’s easy to book a boat to take you to Phong Nha Cave. Each boat is owned by different families, so paying the small fee to have your own boat gives another family income for the day. Adam and I were happy to have our own boat to motor us the several kilometers to the cave. Before we headed into the cave by boat, we stopped so the two of us could hike up to the drier part of the cave located above the river. It ended up being a really cool, very private large cave to explore, but was a bit more of a hike than we expected! The fresh coconut water with a river view was much appreciated when we got back down to the dock.
Phong Nha Cave is really impressive! Your boat takes you in about a kilometer, but that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the enormous space. The cave is really well-lit, and part of it you explore on foot. One amazing thing about this cave and Paradise Cave, which we explored the next day, was how few people seemed to be there. Even though there were a number of tourists coming and going with us, because the cave is so large, it never seemed crowded. You can see from the photos that most of the time we were virtually alone. We spent the whole time just in awe of the beautiful formations and taking in the giant underground spaces.
One thing we didn’t realize when we booked the villa at Phong Nha Farmstay is how spread out the place is. Our villa was located about 1 km away from the hotel restaurant, but the Farmstay made it easy to get a free shuttle back and forth whenever we needed it. We got a kick out of this old US Army Jeep they used as one of their regular transport vehicles. The outside is original, but they told us they had to replace the motor after the big flood in Phong Nha a couple of years ago left it unfixable.
For our second day in Phong Nha, we wanted to explore a bit of the national park. We’d had such a good time with scooter drivers in Ho Chi Minh City that we decided to hire the Phong Nha Riders to drive us on scooters to the sights in the park. It was a great day for a drive! Butterflies filled the air everywhere we went, giving us a sense of magic as we took in the beautiful scenery.
Our first stop was the Phong Nha Botanical Gardens. This is more of a forest and less a tended garden. There are several hikes available, and we decided to do the short waterfall hike the ranger at the ticket booth pointed out. It turned out to be a bit more than we bargained for, complete with warnings of a dangerous abyss and some climbing up ladders and over boulders. We did enjoy the views!
After exploring the botanical gardens, we got back on the scooters and headed for a gorgeous drive through the karst hills towards Paradise Cave. Our drivers stopped at a famous river bridge with a great view of the surrounding hills in between, and the butterflies continued to entertain us.
Paradise Cave is another jewel of the Phong Nha region’s cave systems. We were again impressed by the gorgeous stalagmites and stalactites. The cave is easy to navigate, with sturdy boardwalks and effective lighting that makes it accessible for a wide range of people.
On the way back to the Farmstay, our Riders took us on the scenic route, which included two scary narrow bridges and a scooter ferry ride across the river. The ferry ride was a tiny boat that they packed with our two scooters and all of us on the deck. Everyone else got to stand, but they insisted Angie sit on the deck. Maybe her center of gravity is too high for the narrow, overloaded boat?
For our last full day in Phong Nha, we again hired Phong Nha Riders, this time to take us up the Bong Lai Valley. This was a relaxed trip to Monkey Bridge Farm, a small rubber plantation where we got to try out rubber tree tapping, and the famous Pub with Cold Beer for a delicious home-cooked lunch. On our last morning, we took a walk around the rice paddies and just enjoyed the fresh country air. Phong Nha was an awesome place to spend a few days!
