Our friends at Jungle Bar provided us with 2 motorbikes to rent for the day between the 4 of us. We rode through some excellent scenery on our way.
Entrance to the caves cost as little as 80,000 VND, which is astonishing value for money, converting to £2.50.
Thien Duong/ Paradise caves were, in my eyes, the most fantastic and prodigious wonder we had encountered on our trip to date. The following photos do not do it enough justice:
The magnificent caves of Phong Nha were our next planned destination. Information on getting to Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park seemed to be pretty scarce online and unless you were willing to fork out a fair bit for accomodation by booking a room in the popular farmstay via telephone, it was looking more and more undoable.
We decided to ask our hotel in Hue whether they could help and fortunately enough they got in touch with Thanh Dat hotel based in Phong Nha, who offered us a room for a very reasonable total of 300,000 VND a night (the room cost to be split between 4 – with two double beds). We heard this could have been even cheaper if turning up on arrival.
Thanh Dat is in a great location in relation to the caves. The hotel has hot water and free wifi and the rooms are more than fine for a night or two nights stay, providing you’re not a ‘fussy’ traveller.
The hotels details are as follows:
So here’s a short and simple guide on how to get to Phong Nha caves/Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park from the city of Hue.
1) Book accomodation at Thanh Dat hotel / turn up early to the town so you can book accomodation on arrival elsewhere (there are a few other hotels in the area which also can’t be found online and it’s a very small town so you can get dropped anywhere and still be in walking distance of them)
2) Book a train from Hue to Dong Hoi. This should cost no more than 250,000 VND and takes between 3 and 3 1/2 hours on average. (Dong Hoi is the nearest town to the caves)
3) Prebook or hail a taxi to pick you up from Dong Hoi train station to Phong Nha (this is a 45 minute to an hour journey) at an unavoidably high cost of 400-500,000 VND – we prebooked a taxi through our hotel in Hue, Lam Bao Long Hotel. Alternatively wiki travel has some other suggestions for getting there.
4) From Thanh Dat Hotel it is a 400m walk to docking area where you can purchase tickets for a boat which will take you to and through the cave, stopping off at 2 different parts of the cave to allow for exploration and photos. By boat is the only way to get inside the cave. You can share boats with other tourists (up to 14) which considerably drops the price of the tour and they leave fairly often. One boat costs 300,000 VND.
5) Purchase your ticket for the cave at the same window for the price of 120,000 VND
The boat trip is short but fun and things start to get pretty exciting when entering the mouth of the cave. The engine is cut and you are left to admire the natural wonders which now surround you, with only the sound of high falling water droplets and tender paddling.
Despite the arguably overly-artifical lighting, the caves remain a glorious experience:
Overview from Overseas 