So phong nha was actually one of highlights of our trip so far! We actually only stayed one night but it was one to remember, we got to phong nha at 11am and went about checking into our rather grim hotel room! (Worst so far) but at least it had aircon!
We knew phong nha was out in the sticks a bit but we really had no idea! We went underprepared! The one cash machine In the town was broken so we spent the next couple of hours running about trying to sort it! Eventually we found a hostel nice enough to give us an advance and let us pay for a tour on card!
We'd decided to do a tour of the caves the main thing In phong nha but we were suprised by how amazing it was! We were picked up in a mini bus and stopped to see some really beautiful sights and a sort of memorial temple for people who'd died in a cave collapse (made us feel so much safer) and then we reached the first cave!
To get to the cave we had to walk what felt like a good few miles up quite a steep hill! We were both dripping with sweat by the time we reached the entrance! The cave was amazing! It was 36km long and 40 stories high easily! There were huge stalagmites/tites that were so beautiful.
After spending a while exploring it was time for lunch! Emma couldn't find anything she liked so just stuffed her face with a bucket of rice! But I thought it was all pretty tasty!! After we were taken to the dark cave, the highlight of the tour! To get over the river you zipline from the top of a tower, it was so good (will include pictures) at the other end we all jumped in the lake to cool off!
The dark cave is abit different as you have to swim into it! You can't touch the floor it gets pretty dark pretty quick and all the rocks start looking very menacing! So we swim through and we're guided through a crevice in the wall that was tiny, was quite a squeeze! We walked for a while before we came to a huge mudpit! Mud that literally came up past our hips! It was amazing! You couldn't sink even if you pushed yourself down you just floated to the top! To everyone's amusement emma got stuck and kept falling over! I was laughing to much to save her!
After having some cool pictures taken we had to crawl (literally crawl) through an even tighter passage before we made it to the main cavern and swam even deeper into the cave where the guide had us turn our lights off and swim! And it was pitch black! I was holding Emma's hand and yet we couldn't see each other!!!
When we swam back to leave there was kayaks waiting for us and it was really nice paddling over to the other side of the lake! We were the first over and decided we were going to do another zipline into the lake which we did a couple times until we both hurt ourselfs! While we having a break we both noticed hundreds of butterfly's kind of sitting on some steps! We went over and pretty soon had hundreds of butterfly's flying around us!! Was really really cool! And that was that! We had a few beers and that was it done!
We got back and realised we didn't want to spend another night In our not so nice hotel so booked an overnight bus and after a quick pack were off to Hanoi the capital of Vietnam!