Scott ran down the street this morning to try and book a bus for tomorrow day which would get us to hanoi in time to meet the guys to do The Halong cruise with them but no luck so we had to settle with the night bus not getting us in to Hanoi until 8am on the 8th.

We had breakfast and got picked up around 8.45 and got taken to the national park, we are staying right next to it or you could say in the park because everywhere you look there are huge limestone mountains and rocks which sets the perfect scenery, especially with it being low cloud so you can't see some of the mountain peaks which makes it look magical.
We stopped a few times on our way to the first cave for some photo opportunities, the photos don't give it all enough credibility; you can't capture everything!
The one mountain face was marked by bomb damage. This area got heavily bombed in the Vietnamese war and there is an international company that cleans bombs up all over the world called MAG, they're trying to clean up as many bombs as possible, hundreds and thousands of them are still live so they have to disarm them, we have been told that there is strictly no wandering off the beaten track because there are so many about. A few years back there were so many in the local towns that people were unaware of the funerals of people because of bombs being stood on or picked up accidentally by children was a massive amount. It's going to take around 80 years I think to clean just this area up - there are that many!

We arrived at the 'lady cave' called this because there were 8 ladies hiding in here in the war and died because a bomb hit it and blocked the entrance, it wasn't until 20 years later that they managed to remove the rock and get the bodies or skeletons out and return to their families for funerals!
It's on the HCM highway 20 because the 14 men that built the 65km road into Laos and over the HCM tunnels were around the age of 20 and all died from bombs being dropped on them when they were building it.

It was good to see but we were ready for the bad ass caves!
We went to the paradise cave which we had to trek up a mountain to get to, it's all pathed out because it's open to the public now.
It was discovered in 2005 and is 8km long. All the caves were discovered by two English men who came here about 10 years ago in search of... caves.

Paradise cave was on a different level - WOW! It was huge and deep down in the mountain. The stalactites and stalagmites were massive and the detail on them was incredible, just formed by water... Millions of years old! It was paradise underground without the beach and sun of course but spectacular! Natural beauty at it's best!

After the stroll through on the boardwalk that was put there for tourists.
I don't know how these cave searchers did it, what on earth possess you to trek through jungles and mountains in search of caves, jumping into a black hole not know what is down there, we had lights and stairs but I couldn't do what they do!

After an hour of walking around gawping at the cave we headed back down the mountain for lunch. They fed us well! As they do in Asia, they just kept bringing the food out for us to eat, I'm pretty sure I are the entire bowl of morning glory to myself! Gotta get my veggies in see! People are scared of green things!

Next stop was the last stop, they saved the best for last!!
The dark cave...
We had lockers to put our things and grabbed a life jacket, helmet with a head torch and a harness. We weren't going to take the go pro but we fastened it on well with my shoe lace around the life jacket and on the selfie pole so there is no way it was coming off and us loosing it!
We had to zip wire over the most crystal blue river we have ever seen, it springs up about 4km up the road and they don't know where it starts, they think Laos because when it rains in Laos the colour of the river changes to green (but not the gooey minging colour green. The photoshopped colour green!)

We zip wired down the river and to the other side of the river where the entrance to the cave was. We had to then swim around the corner and we climbed out onto a boardwalk where we walked about 300 metres and then we had to turn our head torches on because it was Dark!!
Through water up to our waists to the sand banks minding the sharp rocks.
There aren't any stalactites or stalagmites here because the limestone is black limestone and is too hot, they're only formed in white limestone.

Once we got to the second sandbank we had to take our life jackets off and in our swimsuits and helmet climb and walk through these tunnels which started with water brown mud around our ankles and gradually became thicker and up to our shins, difficult to walk in and climb little hills and over rocks.
Then we got to the big rock that you had to slide down and fall into thick gloppy mud that weirdly made you float and which ever position you put your body in it would hold you up in that position. Absolutely bizzare feeling! But it's a natural mud bath and it's super good for your skin so I needed a bucket to take it all with me! I couldn't get enough of rubbing it in all over me haha!!
At first I really didn't like it because there were clumps of mud underneath your feet and I just didn't know what it was or what might have unlikely been living in it. I just kept saying to myself it's chocolate, it's cadburys chocolate! It worked..
We had to turn our torches off though which wasn't nice, because I'm scared of the dark... Haha! AWESOME place to be Beth, in a dark cave. You absolute bafoon!

The poor go pro was caked in mud but I managed to keep the lense clean, because I'm awesome. After the hard task of getting back to the main part of the cave we had to wash off, it was difficult because it was caked on us all and the water was unpleasantly cold.
If that wasn't enough for us we had to swim 25m through the cave to another sand bank which was okay because we floated most of it and we had our torches on, but the swim back wasn't as pleasant because we all had to turn our torches off and I couldn't see hand in front of me, it's was awful, I nearly hyperventilated I was petrified. But we did it and after about 20m I thought screw it, I'm putting my torch on!

This cave was only discovered in 2009, again why on earth people would want to climb through these ridiculously small walk ways and through muddy tunnels is beyond me!

Personally I don't think I did too badly considering Rosanna and Sarah seen three snakes in the cave yesterday, which put me on edge the entire time and I was looking around everywhere on edge that one might just pop up next to me but the most we seen was a shredded snake skin thank god!

We all know how wonderful me and Scott are at kayaking, well we had to kayak about 300 metres up the river back to were the main area was and the zip wiring, we were first to get in our boat with another girl and I think we were fourth getting to base, we would go for about 15 metres and then end up twisting around, kayaks are definetly not one of our strong points and as much as Scott thinks it's me being rubbish I personally don't think he's the best at this sport either!
We had time to play on the other zip wire that went across the river and you could jump off into the water, that was fun even though it had started to drizzle and the clouds became really low around us, now we definetly couldn't see the peaks of the mountains surrounding us! But again it was pretty spectacular!!

We were all given a beer for the journey back which was thoroughly enjoyed! We showered the thick clay mud off us that managed to get hide in our swimsuits and make their way back with us to the hostel. We had some food and chilled out with the guys before they left for Hanoi, the 3 or 4 Huda beers will definetly help us sleep like babies!