The most colossal cave in the world – Son Doong Cave

Son Doong Cave has a total length of about 9 kilometers, a giant dome and a volume of nearly 38.5 million cubic meters making it the largest natural cave in the world. All around the world has paid attention to Son Doong Cave because of its uniqueness inside having a lot of enormous stalactites (higher than 80 meters), the inhabitation of a primaeval forest which is developing inside the cave, the diverse ecosystem, distinctive weather conditions or the endless underground river that none of the cave expeditions have ever explore it entirely.

In 1990, a local man went through the forest and needed to find a place to shelter from the rain. At that time, he fortuitously encountered a small stone dome cave glimmering behind the rocky cliff. He narrated that there was dense mist coming from the small entrance and also the sound of a swift-flowing stream echoing from the cave. Some years later, he led the British Cave Research Association to come to the cave but the second time they came back, the crew finally found the location of the cave and named it Son Doong.

Son Doong Cave has a lot of idiosyncratic features that only exist in this cave.

Doline 1 – Watch out for Dinosaurs

An area that has a dome creates a skylight seeing through the outside. With the lowest height of 450 meters from the doline mouth to the bottom of the cave. This is also a locality where the underground river disappears.

Here in Doline 1, you can encounter many fascinating things that only Son Doong has. For example, the “Weeding Cake” stalactite, a giant and eye-catching stacking up stalactite, and the “Rat Run” Cave, a cave on the other side of the Doline 1. And the most special scenery is the sunbeam radiating through the mouth of the Doline 1.

Doline 2 – Garden of Edam

The distance from Doline 2 and Doline 1 is about 1 kilometer, where the primaeval forest stays deep 200 meters inside the cave and under the karst sierra. When exiting Doline 1, you can see a soil slope extending to the forest, this is the area that has the light shining into. There is a lot of diversity of the fern growing along the ambulatory direction that looks just like a pathway to a fairy tale garden. The forest has many massive ancient trees and it took more than 30 minutes to go across the forest to the camping area.

If you want to reach the Doline 2 location, you need to climb over a karst plateau, the stony steps progressively higher like a stair to the Garden of Eden, surrounding the lane are the fern and other small greeneries, all the branches and leaves towards the sunshine. The incredible scenery of nature has created the name “Garden of Edam” for Doline 2.

Hope and Vision Passage

This is the area that has the largest opening in Son Doong Cave. From the position of the Hand of Dog stalagmite, you can observe the sunlight from Doline 1 with a distance of 1.5 kilometers. The cave professionals estimated that this place could contain a skyscraper of more than 40 floors, and the space of the cave could be large enough for a Boeing 747 plane to fly through. The passage is also the place which has the highest stalactite column in the world with a height of 80 meters.

Cave Pearls

Being formed from drips of water from the ceiling that carry calcite carbonate rippling down to the pools on the floor of the cave, The Cave Pearls have many distinguished shapes and sizes of pearls. From the smallest one just like a tiny bean to the bigger one with the size equal to a baseball. The pearls are naturally arranged inside multiple calcium seams and look wonderful under the lamps, especially on a day that has raindrops falling, the pearls in the cave become more sparkling under the flashlight. Although they are pearls, they don’t have any value at all if they are carried under the sunlight, they will turn into plain, uncoloured and ordinary calcium carbonate deposits.

Underground River

Inside the world’s biggest cave, there is an underground river flowing from the Swallow Cave and Khe Ry Cave. From the entrance of the cave, before coming across the Hand of Dog, explorers must go through two streams with the depth at the knee level. When the level of the water rises, there is a ladder in the higher position. When the stream flows into the cave, it creates many waterfalls from 5 to 10 meters high, it also has an echo sound around the dome of the cave causing a lot of water vapour and mist to cover the whole place.

Fossil Passage

Located right next to the underground river 40 meters deep down under the Doline 1 camping site, the fossil passage is where the limestones still have traces of the snails, seashells, fish bones, and other fossil coral from a hundred million years ago. The Fossil Passage is special for its cave walls with many fossil corals, each lasting for approximately 300 million years.

Passchendaele Passage

The passage is the pond under the Great Wall of Vietnam, the length is more than 600 meters. When the expeditioners approach the area, all the amount of water has been drained creating a muddy pathway with a thick level equivalent to the waist. However, when it rains frequently, the water level increases making it into a giant pond with a beautiful turquoise color. In the water-full months, visitors will use rafts, and boats to travel throughout the Passchendaele passage.

The Great Wall of Vietnam

In the past, the expedition’s crew encountered a massive stalactite that blocked the road. Because of the grandiosity and the colossal height of the stalactite, all of them could not measure this section of the cave and they also didn’t have enough specialized tools for the exploration. In front of the cave entrance is a karst wall that is 90 meters high, the expedition industry named it “The Great Wall of Vietnam”. This is one of the toughest on the adventure exploring Son Doong Cave. You have to conquer the wall with a ladder, ropes and assistance from the technicians.

Being the biggest cave in the world with a diverse ecosystem, since its exploitation into a tourist destination in 2013 up to now, Son Doong has always proved its allurement towards the national and international tourism society with awe-inspiring beauty and professional management and operation, as the stability in exploitation and other impressive values. Son Doong Cave is getting more and more attractive because of many unnamed mysteries that humans have not known yet.