If anyone is wondering when David’s input is going to happen, Im afraid it looks like you stuck with me because he just will not write a day up!We got up at 650am after being told our pick up was at 730, breakfast again was unbelievable, cooked banana wrapped in pancakes and coffee. We ate it a little too fast because time was quite fine. After breakfast the hostel owner said they would be here to pick us up between 830-9. Something got lost somewhere in informing us!!!
The lady in the tourist shop told us we could wear pretty much anything for this tour because they would give us suitable shoes so we went with shorts and flip flops with the mind the less clothes the less there are to get wet. The bus arrived and told us we needed long pants and proper shoes…. we weren’t having a good start but we just went with it and ran upstairs to grab some pants.
We first arrived at paradise cave, buggy’s took us to the foot of the mountain and then we were to head 600m up the slope to the cave entrance. The path was super slippy from all the rain.
We got an introduction to the cave, a poor hunter stumbled across it in 2005 after hunting in the heat and feeling the cool air coming from a small entrance he went in, he is now really rich following the discovery, he still lives locally. The cave entrance is really small and they have even widened it since, but inside was just spectacular, it was hard to appreciate the extent of the history and nature before us. The cave is 34km in total, we only went in 1km, you are able to go up to seven km on a different tour but there is no lighting or pathway. It was quite difficult to get photos in there with the lighting.
After paradise cave we moved by bus to the 8 ladies cave, we needed the long pants for this cave as there is a temple here. 8 people got trapped in this very small cave following a bomb explosion in the war. We finally found out about the temples and that local people believe that death means you go to live in another parallel world and this is why they leave fresh food at the temples daily, it’s frowned upon to put you back to the shrine. There were millions of bombs dropped during the Vietnamese war by the Americans and 10% of these have not been found and remain unexploded, it’s illegal to walk around the national park on your own because of the risks. If they find bombs they use the dynamite within them to mine in the area or even make fireworks! Bomb craters can be seen in the jungle.
From this cave we had to change our walking shoes into some Vietnamese sandals, which seemed ridiculous, red rubber jelly shoes in effect, to trek into the jungle??? They called these safety shoes????again we went with it and it soon became apparent. The mud was literally up to our ankles, tree roots, rocks, when your feet sank in the mud it pulled you shoes off, but you wouldn’t be wanting to do this in trainers! We saw some bomb craters as we walked and the guide, Tai, pointed out the poison ivy plant which is meant to be nasty and burn for around 1week if it touches you…… it looked like every other green plant around us!! After walking for 30-40 minutes we reached the river with a sand island in the middle where a bbq was going, wading across the river we got under the tarpaulin in the dry and sat on mats to eat. The food was good, we were to make our own spring rolls from the food lay out, it was great!! I had the delight of needing to use the ‘jungle toilet’ a tiny tent with a bucket, and a toilet lid only, about a foot from the bucket, just for effect!
After lunch we changed in the makeshift changing rooms, again a 3 sided tarpaulin cubicle. I also found a tiny leach on my leg but it hadn’t attached yet!!Next went the cold wet life jackets and the helmets. I’m sure I got a kids helmet because I looked ridiculous!
Actually getting to the Tranang cave entrance was a task in itself, I’m not sure how they advertise this trip as suitable for 6year olds!! The water definitely wasn’t crystal blue today, maybe because of the downpours. There was quite some current as the water flowed out of the cave to the river. The water was cold and deep, I was pretty nervous and David kept telling me to move over a little because I kept booting him as I swam but I didn’t want to go too far away because I wasn’t sure about rocks under the water. Turns out I didn’t have to worry about that because the water was over 50m deep. We swam about 0.25km into the cave before getting out to sit on the rocks. Once everyone was sat Tai told us to turn off our head torches. I’ve never experienced darkness like this, even holding your hand in front of your face you couldn’t see a thing. A lot of the fish in the cave don’t have eyes because it’s so dark. We sat for about 15minutes in the dark playing daft games. One of the games was people for, each country competing on making different animal noises and hearing them echo, everyone was pretty shy, but I got right into it, doing a mountain goat, a dog and a chicken. David was howling laughing at me! All of a sudden it went eerily quiet and I knew Tai was up to something,I really don’t do shocks in the dark or open water so I said, apparently in a really girly voice ‘can we turn the lights back on now??’ That set David off again!
When we put the lights back on we could see all the bats at arms length trying to catch mosquitoes, I was more bothered about catching rabies. It was a good time to leave.
Tai suggested we swam back following the current with no light on, since when was that a good idea?.. it wasn’t, so in true Vietnamese style it happened. It was so eerie, there was only one thing that distracted me from the darkness, a selfie that I took in the pitch black which I then couldn’t swim for laughing so hard. ,y helmet was tight and my life jacket strangling me, on top of being terrified, I looked like a fat kid trying to swim with no armbands. At least take 2 I managed a smile!!
After the caving we dried off and had a coffee before trekking back up the muddy jungle path back to the bus. We washed our feet off and got back on the bus with a well deserved beer each.
South East Asia 2019 