Vietnam: Caves, trains, and graves.
I wouldn’t say I was dreading the cave trek. At least I shouldn’t have. Maybe I did, I don’t remember. But dread is a pretty heavy concept and is probably best reserved for more genuinely dreadful eventualities like— I don’t know— massive chain war, for instance.
Still, I’d be under-disclosing if I didn’t admit I’d been feeling some vague anxiety about the caving leg of our trip pretty much since the moment Patti booked the expedition with Oxalis Adventure Tours back in November. We both had.
Vietnam is home to some of the largest caves in the world and in fact THE largest by volume, the absurd Son Doong Cave which features its own jungle and a 30+ story high passage— a total of nearly 40 million cubic meters. It’s what they refer to in the caving business as a BALLER—a truly all-inclusive adventure which lasts a week.
So, we didn’t choose that one. But even our starter experience of the 3-day Hang Tien stroll had not only me but also our travel agent (Patti) feeling a little goosey. It was rated EASY unlike some of the other packages such as MODERATE, CHALLENGING, WHY DID I AGREE TO THIS and AGONIZING DEATH LIKELY. But we still had to submit a full-body shot of us working out and a detailed description of not only our daily exercise routine but also a list of any medications we take. So we sent them the most truthful lies & doctored images possible— and after some negotiation and extra layers of disclosure, Oxalis agreed to accept our deposit. We still knew we were going to have to swim in an underground river and that it was possible we would be eaten by leeches. We were warned that it was potentially dangerous and that it would be really hard physically.
We were less prepared for the emotional challenge…
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We arrived in Phong Nha Saturday afternoon on the sleeper bus from Dong Hoi. Those buses are a pretty comfortable way to travel, but did you know they don’t have bathrooms on them? Neither did I!
The sprawling Chay Lap Farmstay had an outdoor pool and restaurant/bar and lots of bikes and kayaks for the taking. There wasn’t much to do out there other than spelunk, and our trek didn’t start till Monday. So we opted out of the day caving and spent the two days getting lost on the remote country roads amongst the giant karsts of the Phong Nha Valley.
I still don’t understand the geology of these marvels. The valley is basically sea-level, only 40 flat minute’s drive inland from the beach at Dong Hoi. But very suddenly you are winding through these vine-crusted haystacks that rise like thunder from the valley floor. Hundreds of them, just plopped down seemingly wherever the gods dropped them. Some are modest in size—others colossal, like 3000’ tall. But there’re no foothills or gentle rises. You’re either flat on the floor or rising vertically, like climbing a giant incisor. And then it’s so crazy to think that half of these things are hollow and inside are thousands of caves!
From the minute the Oxalis van picked us up Monday morning until they delivered us back to Dong Hoi Wednesday afternoon, we felt exceptionally well cared for. Our guide Hui was always close by and every aspect of the experience was incredibly well curated—from booking straight through the expedition itself and to the deep parting hugs we shared at drop off.
The Hang Tien tour can accommodate as many as a dozen guests, but our group had only six. In addition to Patti and me there was a woman from Germany, a dude from Poland and two childhood friends from Da Nang— one currently living in Australia and the other outside Paris. With the exception of some asides exchanged between Hui and the local kids, we communicated exclusively in English—but with a real UN menu of accents. The Europeans may have been in their early 40s; all three of the Vietnamese kids were 30. They wondered— at times aloud— if the Americans in their 60s were going to be able to keep up.
Most of the really challenging stretches were on the second day, but the first afternoon did feature the swimming segment. To comprehend the power of this experience, it’s helpful to first understand the interior of the cave itself. You can look at YouTube footage of this trek all you want, but until you’re actually there, you can’t truly understand what it’s like. What I wasn’t prepared for is how clean the cave is. Without light, nothing grows—so there’s no brush or vines or even moss. There are no witches or monsters unless you count the pigeon-sized bats or the crab-sized spiders. There’s mud, but it’s sandy and clean. And the surfaces themselves and the water are super clear. It feels fake, actually— like a theme park. Like how could this ecosystem actually exist naturally?
These welcoming conditions did make it easier to justify slowly descending from the contoured rock surface of the bank down into the underground river, the bottom of which you could eventually no longer feel beneath your feet. The water was not cold— but other than the beam of your own headlamp, it was profoundly dark. Like it’s the most consuming and absolute darkness imaginable. And you’re drifting along in a subtle current in all your clothes including your shoes plus a helmet and life jacket. The walls of the cave wind forward—or is it backward? There’s little telling. The stalactites hang down from the unseeable ceiling and pretty soon the river is narrowing and the walls are only a few feet apart and you’re scraping sideways through a crevice just wide enough to accommodate you. There’s a lot of distance between party members at this point and at times you feel a little alone.
It’s a weird high. Patti thought we might have been in the water an hour, but I don’t think it was half that. And that’s a good illustration of the vacuum effect of the cave. Floor, ceiling, walls— they’re all the same, with distance and even time kind of taking on a different form than we’re accustomed to. Like space I guess. I’ve never been.
We did two caves that first day and after a long, muddy descent we ended up at the riverside camp where our dry clothes, a reasonably dry tent (it had begun raining lightly) and dinner were waiting for us. The food prepared by Ly and his crew was delicious and plentiful throughout— another gold star for Oxalis.
Honestly, there aren’t sufficient gold stars in the review galaxy to adequately spiff Oxalis Adventures. Not only Hui & Ly but also the porters and our personal spotter who ironically went by the English tag of ‘Victory.’ The assignment for this wiley goat of a man was clearly to keep the Americans alive during the trek. And without him we might indeed not have emerged, as there were a few times when his steady hand or shoulder could very literally have been the difference between survival and permanent death.
The group pretty quickly fell into a formation of Hui in front followed by the Europeans and the Vietdudes with Patti and I bringing up the rear. Victory would hover behind us with a stabilizing hand on the dicey parts and a ‘wacho haid wacho haid’ when the tites hung far low. On the last day, during the punishing muddy ascent up the back of the last karst in 90/90 conditions (90 degrees; 90% humidity) Vic was literally fanning us from a step behind. It was a little embarrassing but also incredibly refreshing. When I handed him the half-million dong tip at the end of the trek, I asked him if we could adopt him. He had no idea what I’d said of course, but we both just laughed and laughed and I guess I kind of miss that little dude this morning, recalling him fondly in-writing.
And that second day did feature some pretty hairball moments. We were prepared for styx swimming and we knew the hike out at the end was going to be hard. But we didn’t know about the rappelling or the ladder or about zip-lining across the 40’ chasm or the tightwire walk across the narrow, elevated limestone spine with no handholds in-sight (other than Victory’s). That was the part that made Patti cry. On the way in. And then we had to come back out…
But we did come back out. We made it. We reached the ice-cold shuttle bia that Hui had been promising us since hour 1. We got a wooden medal draped around our necks in an Ozlike roadside ceremony while drinking that bia. We got to convene with our little team in the home of an Oxalis villager that night to enjoy a regionally-significant meal and participate in its traditional preparation. And we got to sleep like rocks in one of the villager’s floating ADUs having faced our fears and vanquished our insecurities. I’d do it again if I had to, but I probably won’t. Have to, that is. My caving days may well be over.
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We pulled in to the Ninh Binh train station after dark on Thursday after a 9-hour train ride from Dong Hoi. Neither of us had ever taken a sleeper train before, and at $12/bunk, we splurged on the other two spots in the 4-bunk compartment so we’d have our own private space. It was a really delightful ride with reasonably comfortable bunks and a vase of plastic flowers. I wouldn’t really call it sleeping, but we ordered some bia’s at sunset and enjoyed the scenery & greenery of the Vietnam countryside.
Another 20 minutes by car got us to the Ninh Binh Valley Homestay that had looked so sexy in the photographs. Don’t they all. In true reality, the facilities at NBVH were pretty spartan, with stone floors, bamboo walls and thatch roofs. But the setting couldn’t hardly be beat, literally at the end of a long network of narrowing roads, winding amongst the karsts of Ninh Binh. These monoliths seemed to have a slightly different geological composition than their cousins in Phung Nha, 300 miles to the south. These stacks were just as dramatic, but seemed craggier. Maybe it was merely that they were covered in less vegetation, I’m not sure. But these looked rockier, and caving aint a big deal up there so maybe they haven’t been hollowed out by water and calcium and time like the ones in Phong Nha.
The Valley Homestay was a great place to decompress after the wiggy excitement of the caves. We actually lounged by the pool a little and swung gently in the hammocks on the porch of our bungalow, listening to the frogs and gazing up at the quiet giants looming on all sides of the private grounds. Pedaling home from dinner in town on the last night, the full moon was peeking out from behind the clouds as the fireflies danced above the fields next to one of the village’s many pop-up cemeteries. The karsts were silhouetted against the moonlit sky and we stopped on the dirt road and just took in the consuming nothingness of it all. I wished I could bottle it and save a taste for later, when I could use the peace of it. But that’s not how it works. You can’t take it with you. There is only the moment.
The next afternoon, we would be back in the chaos of the city, ready to rock Hanoi.
* Note: no leeches! The Oxalis website is pretty frank about the likelihood of unknowingly picking up a few of these blood-sucking hitchhikers, and we met a young couple from the Bay Area on our Saigon streetfood tour who had taken this same trek only a month earlier, and they definitely got attached. But Hui said it wasn’t peak leech season, and we were also successful in avoiding poisonous snakes and Dengue mosquitos also. For the win!
