Tag Archives: Tu Lan Cave Expedition

SEA: Day 64 – Tu Lan Last Day

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On the final morning of this trip, we visited Hang Tien 1 and Hang Tien 2. If memory serves right, we walked through Hang Tien 1 and then got to Hang Tien 2. These caves are massive. The entrance was so large. I can’t fathom how much water was rushing through here to make this ginormous hole in the side of a mountain.

I forgot to mention, near our third camp site, was a pool of water carved into the side of the mountain. It was practically underneath a cliff. We walked by this pool, or if you wanted, swam over, several times. I swam over a couple times. The first time we came across it, we were setting up camp, so i just dove in to swim around.

Later I learned that the pool has no bottom. It’s literally the beginning of the river we’ve been following. Many of the river crossings was water that came from this hole in the ground. So cool. And creepy.

In mid afternoon, we trekked up to a designated point to meet a van that would take us back to Chay Lap. I was so happy to see the van. Not only cause we didn’t have to walk anymore, but because it had dry clothes. Changing into dry clothes after being wet for 4 days felt amazing.

Back at Chay Lap, I enjoyed a steam sauna, some awesome dinner, and slept in a bed. Until 3:30am at least, cause that’s when I left to head down to Hoi An.

SEA: Day 63 – Tu Lan Day 3

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I found my gopro videos! Yes! I don’t have them with me, so here’s my favorite pictures taken by fellow caver and photographer, Joshua Brookes. I’ll definitely need to do a follow-up post on this entire trip.

Huy Cave

Above picture was taken in Huy Cave, all lights turned off except for my headlight. My writing cannot do justice on the feeling of sitting in a huge tavern being surrounded by darkness knowing that a few steps to my right was just a ledge to the dark. You hear “pictures are worth 1000 words” thrown around, and sometimes, I can’t help but think that even pictures aren’t enough.

On the way to Huy Cave, we took a short dip through a river that ran through Bat Cave. Before we headed in, our guide surveyed the entrance, then let us know to follow. We used our packs as floaties and swam through the cave- took maybe 10 minutes at most? Will have to check the videos. When we got out on the other side, our guides mentioned that we had just swum underneath that, pointing behind us. I turned around and realized that he was pointing at the mountain. We swam underneath a mountain. He said he had to check if we had enough room to swim through safely. Sometimes the cave is completely submerged under water, or the waters are too fast for safe passage. Swimming instead of trekking saved us a couple hours.

One thing keeps popping to mind as I write this. Nature is awesome. We really need to start acting before our impact is irreversible.

SEA: Day 62 – Tu Lan Day 2

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I actually have NO photos from this day. It’s not strange cause I knew i wouldn’t be taking pictures, but without my gopro videos, it’s hard to remember what exactly I did.

I did write down everything in my calendar though! According to my calendar I did the following activities: trek, visit cave, swim through cave, eat, trek, visit cave, eat, sleep. So my entire day can be summed up by saying “I trekked through caves.”

I do remember repelling down a cave wall onto a boat, you couldn’t see, floating on an underground river, surrounded by darkness. Pretty cool.

Also, I asked where the river went to, and the guide said it lead to a whirlpool that drained into only God knows where. Pretty cool.

It’s really intense when you turn off all the lights and you’re in total darkness. All you hear is the sound of rushing water. And the occasional bug flying by your ear.

I gotta find those gopro videos to throw up some pictures. Might have to write a follow-up separate post for Tu Lan…

SEA: Day 61 – Tu Lan Day 1

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Tu Lan expedition day 1! Woo! I’ve been looking forward to this day so that I could actually take a look at all the gopro videos I shot during this trip. I glanced through them after the hike, but the good byproduct of this blog was making me actually watch videos.

::Half hour goes by::

And now after a half hour of looking for these videos, I can’t find them. I really hope they are on a hard drive at home. If they are not, I will be sad. But not that sad, cause I obviously didn’t care enough to watch them for the past 2 years.

Forging ahead, I broke my rule of writing my blog before I left the house this morning. I woke up late this morning again at 8:30am. Day light savings really effed with me this time around. I stopped setting an alarm clock a few months ago, just naturally waking up between 6 to 7:30am. But now, I wake up at 7ish, and it’s dark and my body is confused so I just sleep more. I will break this cycle.

FORGING ahead again, I’m sorry. I’m so distracted right now. My mind is being split into a million different places. This is what happens when I’m trying to write with all these other distractions. Hm, maybe this is why people do stuff first thing in the morning, before their head gets filled with other non-important tasks, like doing tasks at work, or doing taxes. Stupid stuff like that.

Gosh, I side tracked again. If you’re still reading this, I apologize. Okay, just very quickly, first day was awesome. Started the actual hike around 10am walking 2.5 km’s through the peanut and buffalo fields to the Rao Nan River.

After crossing the river, we got to experience our first cave, called the Secret Cave. We go through this and continue forward with a trek to Hung Ton Cave entrance. Got to eat lunch at the entrance of Hung Ton. The picture on the bottom right is actually the location of one of the scenes from King Kong.

From Hung Ton, we hike through the jungle to the Tu Lan Campsite. This campsite is right at the entrance of the Ken Cave, first made famous by a National Geographic article in January 2011. The entrance of this cave is actually a waterfall. In order to see the cave, you have to walk past the waterfall (there is a path), then swim into the cave before you climb out onto land and continue the exploration.

I really wish I had my videos. It’s really something to experience swimming into the dark. And it’s also scary swimming out of the cave, cause it’s only darkness behind you.

And this day is when my American arachnophobia was somewhat cured. Spiders in the states are small. Spiders in the jungle are large and you see their eye balls glistening in the dark before you see their bodies. I was climbing up some rocks and I just happened to glance at my hand as I was getting up, and next to it was something larger than my hand. Yes, it was a spider. Yes, I was scared. Yes, I might have peed, but luckily I was already wet from swimming.

We got to explore pretty deep into the cave. I think maybe an hour or so in, we turned around and headed back to camp. Again, we had to swim to exit the cave. When I think about how dark that water was, that I couldn’t touch the bottom, and that behind me was just darkness, I wonder how I did that. Adrenaline is quite something, eh?

SEA: Day 60 – Chill Day

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Most of this day was just relaxing and prepping for the Tu Lan cave expedition. It’s a 4 day, 3 night, 34 kilometer hike going through multiple caves and camping out in the jungle coordinated by Oxalis. I’ve never done anything in my life remotely like this, and I was super pumped. The briefing wasn’t until 5:30 pm, so I had the afternoon to hang out until then. So I went on a short muddy bike ride through Phong Nha, chilled by the pool, took a nap, and then met up with my group and tour guide at 5:30pm.

Map I used to navigate the biking course.

There would be 3 of us tourists, 2 tour guides, 1 expert caver, and 5 porters. We went through some slide presentations, safety stuff, more safety, and then had dinner together. By 8pm, everyone had either retired for the night or went on to take care of other things. I was back in my room early as well and got ready for the next day. Since we’d be gone for 3 nights, we left the majority of our gear with the hotel. All I took were 2 pairs of boxers, 3 pairs of socks, 2 long sleeves, 2 pants, 1 pair of shorts, camera, gopro, phone, external battery charger, and my wallet (probably, I can’t remember).

Note: WordPress just removed the ability to look up things in Google Photos. I have to scroll backwards to find photos now? Takes forever. I hope this is a glitch.

Some views while biking.
Biking views.

SEA: Day 59 – Travel to Phong Nha

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Lately, before I leave the apartment, I’ve been making sure to a.) take a cold water dip in the pool and b.) write this blog. Normally I wake up around 7ish and can get these two things done along with a few other things off my checklist. I’m leaning on calling these “checklist items” my Actions List for one reason or another.

Well, today was daylight saving time. I did not know and woke up naturally at 7:30am, which is actually 8:30 now. This kind of threw my day off since it’s Sunday and I like to make it to the 9:15am service at Tapestry. I actually got into the pool within 10 minutes of waking up. Think that’s the fastest I ever made it. I decided I’d write this piece at church so I could make service.

I can’t recall being worried about daylight saving time while in Asia. Why does the United States, and societies in general, stick with outdated practices? I suppose as humans, we may like to stick with what we know, what is comfortable, what is routine. We don’t like change once the dust has settled. I believe this can become dangerous as “routine” becomes boring and dull. Our minds need stimulation to continue to function. And maybe that’s why some people, once they get stagnant in life, work, relationship, etc., decide on something drastic. Travel, quit, break up, move, … everything I have done, and other things I haven’t even thought of. To go look for stimulation to break out of this routine life. I believe others don’t need this because they have found ways to keep their brains learning and active. Their “routine” includes dealing with things outside the norm, which is ironically, not routine at all.

New experiences are refreshing for the soul, whether it’s physical or mental, good or bad.

During this trip, taking buses, being somewhat lost, and not knowing exactly where we were going became my routine. At first, it was extremely uncomfortable. It was difficult for me to give up control, always projecting what I expected next. It happened abruptly the first time I had an unscheduled bus stop. Okay, unschedule stop is fine. But when it includes a stop, getting off the bus, switching busses, in the middle of the night, on the side of the road, without an explanation, can be startling. When this first happened, I didn’t know what to do. But what can you do? You can’t NOT go. So you just go. It was both terrifying and quite liberating at the same time. I had one reasonable decision to make, and I went with it. Got onto the other bus, and fell asleep. That was my bus ride back from Sapa to Hanoi.

The bus ride from Hanoi to Phong Na was equally strange. Bunch of us were shuttled from a hostel meeting point into a van, dropped off somewhere, waited around for 15 minutes, shoved onto another bus, dropped off and walked to another location, waited around, shuttled onto a bus, waited on the bus for an hour, and then the bus ride started.

A few hours in, I was dropped off at another hostel and told to wait for another bus. For real? Why can no one tell me this was supposed to happen before it happened?! Why am I the only one being dropped off? And how come the hostel looks closed?? Oh, right. Because it’s 4 in the morning. A few busses did show up, people from the hostel came out and got on, I asked the driver if I should get on, I was told no, and the bus drove off. What an uncomfortable feeling. Also, I was cold. Being cold sucks. If it was sunny and I was toasty, this wouldn’t be as bad. Instead, it was dark, foggy, and lightly raining.

An SUV eventually showed up. The driver came out and asked “are you James?” I was so happy to hear that. She got me to Chay Lap Farmstay, the starting point for the Tu Lan Cave Expedition. By the time I got settled into my room, it was 5am. I had been on the road for the past 19 hours. Once I got into the room, I did immediately what you are all thinking. Got into bed and watched Archer. I eventually fell asleep around 6:30, which was good cause I needed to be awake by 9 to head to Oxalis Shop to do some last minute paperwork for the Tu Lan expedition.

WHEW, this one was long. I had a lot to say. Here’s some pictures for your reward for making it this far. I know, it’s just pictures, but take what you can get, right?

I mentioned yesterday that my last day in Sapa was beautiful. Here’s some night/day, cloudy/sunny comparisons. It was eye opening to wake up the next day and see entire mountains where I did not see them at all before. No mountains, then mountains. Same view. Wow.