Paradise Cave. What a promising name, isn’t it?

As mentioned earlier, Dong Hoi is especially popular with tourists that come here to visit the nearby caves, which was also my own reason to come here.
After spending yesterday by exploring the city checking out the beach, today was reserved entirely for the caves. As usual, I chose a self-guided motorbike trip over any of the tour packages that are on offer and left Dong Hoi early.

There are a couple of caves in the area, all of them supposedly interesting and different from each other. However, as they all require a good amount of time and since they are quite pricey for vietnamese standards (ranging from 50.000 to 120.000 Dong admission, $2,50 to $6,00) I did some research in advance and chose Paradise Cave.

Paradise Cave is 31km long, of which only the first kilometer is accessible for „normal“ visitors. Certain tours continue further into the mountain but they certainly have their price.

The sheer height of this cave is breathtaking but not only is it incredibly large, its also wonderfully designed. Stalagmites and Stalactites create weird shapes that come to life through the artistically placed decoration lights. The wooden path that leads the visitors through the cave turns and bends and quickly you are under the impression of standing in the middle of the earth centre. Its…undescribable.

Paradise cave is by far not the first cave I have ever seen. I visited caves in Hungary, Thailand, Laos even smaller ones in Vietnam. But this does not compare to anything I have ever seen before. If you think caves are boring, think again.

And since I know that words won’t get my impressions across, here are some visuals: