I will write more about the war of Vietnam in later posts. In short, the North and South were very divided, and the South wasn’t even Vietnam originally. The North was communist and the South didn’t want to come under the same restrictions. They asked soviet union and USA for help to keep it that way, as we know that didn’t work out well for anyone but we will come back to the war.
Interestingly, Vietnam is only 8% Catholic and 8% Buddhism, and the rest are actual atheist. Which surprised me after all the Asian, Malaysian, and Indonesian countries I’ve been to.
After the war and the country was united as one, the government changed the way they wanted to run the country in 1986 and started selling the land to local people to benefit the economy. I’d made a note from our guide that Central Vietnam has more jasmine rice fields, whereas the North has more sticky rice. North has lycee, central and south for mangosteen.
Today, we visited two caves within Phong Nha.
Paradise Cave
Paradise Cave is in the Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park. It was discovered by explorers from the British Cave Research Association in 2005 that found the cave and took 5 years to build the road and wooden platform. Its a limestone cave and 31km in length. They estimate it took 35-40 million years for the cave to form and a 1m of stalactites and stalagmites takes 1 million years to form.
When they join, they are called a column.
There were multiple colours in the cave:
- Red is due to iron
- Yellow is due to Cooper
- Green is due to moss
- White is from the calcium
- Black is when a tree above ground reacts to the limestone.
It was about 22’c in the cave, and collapsed parts have made good airflo, especially nearer the end of the cave we were able to walk in. Though they did have CO2 monitors at that end of the cave just in case.
When arriving on the bus, we got buggies further up the mountain before our hike up to the entrance of the cave. Once we entered the cave, it was 268 steps down (I counted on the way up). There was then a wooden platform to follow through the cave. Was very impressive!
Phong Nha Cave
Second cave we visited we had to get a boat too. We went into the cave and up the end and then we got off near the entrance and there was part we could walk through. The boat trip felt slightly awkward in the cave as the route in was against the current and the two ladies manning out boat were struggling and kept hitting the wall and pushing off from the sides of the cave, did noticed most of the boats were struggling in that direction as well! But the way out was with the current, so it was a lot smoother.
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