Campsite inside the Son Doong cave

As wonderful as other cave in the world

Son Doong Cave is located in Son Trach commune, Bo Trach District, Quang Binh province, Vietnam. It is found by a local man named Ho Khanh in 1991 and was recently discovered in 2009 by British cavers, led by Howard Limbert. Son Doong cave is hidden in rugged Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in Quang Binh province near the border with Laos. It has the big potentials for tourism development, especially adventure tourism.

Son Doong Cave is more than 200 meters wide, 150 meters high, and approximately 9 kilometers long, with caverns big enough to fit a 40 storey building. There are even a jungle and a large, fast-flowing underground river inside the cave.

Recently, the UK's Telegraph has published a series of stunning photos of Son Doong cave taken by Australian photographer John Spies.

According to The Huffington Post, Son Doong is compared to the gaint caves such as Mammoth in Kentucky (USA) - the world's longest cave with 640 km of surveyed passageways, Krubera cave in Georgia - the world's deepest cave with 2,190m.

The measure is considered as a great success. British tourist Simon Dunne, who was one of six to go on a trial tour, said: "It's very hard to comprehend the scale of the cave".
Simon told to Daily Mail, "Places that seem a 20 minute walk away take two hours to reach. The darkness really confuses your sense of depth, especially when you're given a rare glimpse of light".

"The strangest experience of them all was the silence. As they say, silence is deafening and when you're in the lake section of the cave, which is barren to all things living, standing in complete darkness and silence is an experience I'll never forget", Dunne said.

Simon Dunne also compared the exploration of Son Doong cave to the adventurous trip of Indiana Jones, a famous character played by film star Harison Ford.

Coming to cavern entrance has been an adventure

More than 160 international tourists has explored Son Doong Cave since it put into operation. Each seven-day-and-six-night tour costs a visitor USD3,000 and it generated a revenue of nearly VND10 billion (nearly USD470,000) for Quang Binh province in the first six months of 2014. The pilot tours to Son Doong has just ended with the limited number of four tours each month.

Many people who have booked the tour, which is sold online only, said they are still waiting for their turn to explore the cave, because all tours to Son Doong cave fully booked up to 2016. The list of tourists to explore Son Doong Cave for 2015 has not been announced yet.

Up to now, the number of tourists to Son Doong cave has been considered "lucky ones". A trekking to the entrance of Son Doong cave is also an adventure.

Reported by Tien Phong
(www.quangbinh.gov.vn)