We woke up early, as always. It's hard not to when you're all in a single room. We did not eat a massive breakfast at the hotel this time, which was a complete surprise, and headed out right away! What happened to never skipping meals? Oh, just kidding, we got a block away and then had breakfast where it was $1 cheaper. To be fair, that is 50%... but Lou and I are the ones paying for all of this, and who gives a fuck. (Also, obviously, the caffeine wore off). Afterwards we continued out to.... some cave! Last night I asked Lou about today's plans... and she told me "You don't need to know." So I'm winging all of this, and taking my backpack everywhere.
We were the first tourists in this parking lot, which meant the stall-girls all were emphatic we needed to park in their spots, hoping we would favor their identical stand to purchase water or a souvenir. It also meant that, after a kilometer of walking up (always up) switchbacks, we had the cave to ourselves! I know I shouldn't be surprised by this anymore, but it's freaking massive.
Discovered in 1991, it remained unmapped until a geologic expedition came to town a decade later. Hearing of their interest, a local hunter sought them out to tell them about the windy overhang he would take shelter in during rainstorms. In caving there's a saying: "If it blows, it goes" so they sought out the crack and found a massive 31km of passages. Thankfully, our ticket only covered the first half-mile.
TLDR? It's enormous. You could fit a McMansion inside the entry room, with gardens on every side, and the cave continued to stretch back from there. Geologically, it's not as ornate as Luray caverns (my home cave), but that may be only due to scale. If you collapsed all the cool features into cave you couldn't drive a double-decker bus through (not literally, busses can't do stairs) it'd be the most celebrated cave in North America.
We had the cave to ourselves... until Lou's indomitable need to document her narcissism allowed a few tour-busses to catch up. Both our driver and the (bored) in-cave security guard were pressed into tripod duty, and I resorted to my own photography to kill time. Caves are a great place to refresh on the basics: Light. It's all light. Choosing the color, direction, and contrasting volumes of photons are what make some photos good, and some portraits impossible - no matter how many times you try, you're still gonna be backlit beyond recognition. Can we please stop attempting the same hopeless shot for the twelfth time?
Have you heard the story of the Russian Cosmonaut? So the cosmonaut – he’s the first man ever to go into space. And he’s got this portal window, and he’s looking out of it, and he sees the curvature of the earth. For the first time. The first man to ever look at the planet he’s from. And he’s lost in that moment. And all of a sudden, this strange tapping is coming out of the dashboard. He rips out the control panel, takes out his tools, trying to find this sound – trying to stop this sound. But he can’t find it. He can’t stop it. It keeps going. A few hours into this, it begins to feel like torture. A few days go by with this sound and he knows that this. small. sound. will break him. But what’s he going to do? He’s up in space, alone. In a space closet. He’s got 25 days left to go - with this sound! So the cosmonaut decides that the only way to save his sanity... is to fall in love... with this sound. or so the apocryphal story from an amazing mixtape goes. It's clearly BS, but the moral strikes home. I made a game of the instagram, fell in love with the instagram. Grandpa made the same choice by a different route, and began posing for photos in locations he found photogenic.
First cave complete, time for.... another cave! Clearly the caffeine didn't work, so I doubled-down, grabbing a coke while Lou bought tickets. Thankfully, double-or-nothing paid off! Again, I know it's totally unsustainable, but if it lets me enjoy these natural gems at the cost of a shitty airplane ride....
Cave #2 was a boat-cave-tour! We rented out the entire boat (which meant we didn't have to wait for 6 more people) for $12, and it's a beast of a boat. I don't mean that in a flattering way, more like a workhorse, or a draft ox. The engine is near-deafening, likely a large-bore single-cylinder, and it shakes the entire boat with every stroke. And for all that, it doesn't get on-plane. It has never even heard of such a concept, and if it learned of such it would fear it like Elizabethans convinced the sheer velocity of train would be fatal. After departing the pier, we made a brief stop where a teenaged boy ran down the shore and jumped onboard, with a 2-liter bottle of what I'm decently sure was diesel, and we were off again.
[*chatgpt and my geologist brother arrived at the same estimate equally quickly]
We sailed 2km down the cave - to the end of the artificial lighting. There's another 5km of navigable water beyond that, but only if you opt for the 8-hour kayaking tour. We made our way back almost to the entrance, and disembarked on a naturally sandy beach within the cave, where I learned our tour-guide was also a photographer! Of course she is. Whatever, I scored a few more points in my game. Again, great cave, and the 500m walk out was full of even more incredible formations on a scale I'd never seen before.
Exiting the cave, I found a watercloset! Success! Then we did some drone things (the DJI is incredible... I was probably 4x past visual range but still had incredible signal, and if anything ever goes wrong you can always hit "return to home and autoland" button to unfuck everything). Drones are always fun. Then we met our boat and chilled on our way back to the home-base, passing literally hundreds of identical boats - every house on shore had a couple boats parked out front. During peak season this place must be busting. As is, it appears all the boats are on rotation in strict numerical order, and after dropping us off our boat headed out, empty, to find it's berth (by which I mean the chunk-of-shore where our bow-oarsman was originally picked up. I assume they're family.)
[MAYBE DRONE VIDEO HERE]
And with that, it was 3pm! WE DID MISS A MEAL! Figures as soon as I blog it a counterfactual pops up. Anyways, we stopped by the hostel for a "bathroom break" (actually so Lou could change), and then set off out-of-town, passing dozens of restaurants without even slowing down. An hour later we tried to find food, but at 4pm all the lunch places had closed and the dinner-places were yet to open. After shouting at a few promising-looking restaurants (open garages with a stove surrounded by stools and chairs), we finally found somewhere that hadn't sold out. A somewhat surprised shop-owner/cook/janitor/entrepreneur served us some lukewarm food which we all devoured, thankful.
We continued on to the coast, only getting slightly lost. At one point we drove across a construction site that definitely wasn't rated for sedans, and then we started pulling up next to locals and shouting at them. I'm not sure what happened, but I heard the Vietnamese term "googlemaps" repeatedly. Four harassed locals later, we pulled up to a dude on an ATV. I thought we were gonna harass him too, but apparently this is who we were looking for! After this hour-long drive, lunch fiasco, navigational confusion, etc... Lou turns to me and says "It's expensive, $3/person. Do you still want to go sand-sledding?"
Not especially, sand-sledding sounds lame. But apparently we'd driven all the way out there just for this, so we're definitely gonna do it. We jumped on the back of this local's massive ATV and tore out across the dunes. When we dismounted we were handed some 4mm plastic sheeting with a rope on the front and pointed towards the edge. I left my wallet in my boots (again, high-trust culture is great) and went full send. Is sand-sledding worth $3? Definitely not. You slide slowly down the hill, scooching where-ever it gets slightly less steep, and then you have to hike all the way back up. I honestly wouldn't do it if even if you were paying me $3/run. But since we were on the top of some great dunes, I tried to teach Lou the proper way to enjoy them: By hucking yourself off the edge as hard as you can. Due to age/fitness/exhaustion I'm definitely not as fast as I used to be, but I'm happy to report I'm still dumb enough to sprint at a blind cliff and full-commit into the open sky - earning a good 20+ feet on all my attempts. It appears I've finally found Lou's limit - she couldn't bring herself to jump more than a foot or so, even when I threatened to make fun of her on the internet. Her loss, that moment where your body screams "WE'VE BEEN WEIGHTLESS TOO LONG WE'RE GONNA DIE" is sublime. All in all, 8/10. Sand sledding is shit, but tearing around dunes on a quad and a few moments finally embracing l'appel du vide are definitely worth the $3. Probably not worth the 3 hours, but c'est la vie.
And that's it. A long drive back to the hostel for showers, packing, and a couple beers. Tomorrow we fly back to HCMC.
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| Final score: 7/10. Have you figured out the game? |
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