Probably best known for Son Doong, the world's largest cave, thanks to the photoshoot in National Geographic, this Karst mountain region is now fairly well known.  The whole area is remote and about an hour'drive from Dong Hoi, which is a major train stop between Danang and Hue.  Interestingly enough, all the towns here are practicing Catholics-- the place is full of churches.  I could have sworn I saw an Asian-looking version of Madonna and Child.....

interesting facts about the area:

• Phong Nha Ke Bang is named for 2 things: Phong Nha is the name of the town that this mountain range is near to, and Ke Bang is the name of the mountain-- so they put it together to get Phong Nha Ke Bang Nat'l Park.
• There are many locals here who still remember the Vietnam-American War. In fact, one of the many Australian expats here told me that the Vietnamese are not long-term planners because many of them lived in a time where they thought they only had hours to live.
• Tunnels that the Vietnamese used during the war still exist, but it seems that even the expert cavers don't want to go in-- our guide said that he found them scary, hot, and humid. They would hide in the tunnels so that when the Americans tried to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which was the supply line to Laos, they could come out and fix the road almost instantly.
• Phong Nha cave is where many of the locals fled to in order to stay alive during the heavy bombings.
• This area has suffered a lot-- not only did they lose a lot of folks in the war (the whole country lost 2/3 of their population) but in 1990 they had a massive malaria outbreak and lost another good portion of their population. 
• During flooding season, electricity tends to cut out and the area gets cut off from the world. Folks survive with generators, but this area (although more hotels are going up) doesn't have the general infrastructure to support more folks than it already has to. 
• Ethnic minority tribes still remain in the area-- in fact it is hard to tell them to change their way of life as they are used to climbing trees to collect honey, hunt, and cut trees down to build houses. Very different language, and the villagers we met on the way to and from Hang En seemed to be slowly adapting to modern times. No electricity, but they had a school for the children. Everyone in that village was a descendant of or related by marriage to the Village Chief and his wife-- and there were over 30 people living there.

After some gross camping experiences in New Hampshire a couple of years ago, I was pretty hesitant to go camping again, but overall I had a great time on this 14 mi round trip trek. The whole trek was full of pretty incredible stuff, like the minority village people to the beautiful mountain scenery and of course, the Hang En cave itself. Words and pictures can barely describe how large the place is. It's got great acoustic properties-- imagine my delight when the cave reverberated with my sneeze! Apparently someone brought their banjo at one point and it was a great performance so if you feel up to trekking with an instrument, this could be a cool venue. If you're interested in taking photos (like I am) then most of the time you'll find that since almost everyone on these treks carries a camera of sorts, the guides are quite good at telling you where to take photos, will take photos of you for you, and will help organize the other folks on the trip to do some "light painting" for long exposures. 

We've traveled with 2 different companies on this trip, Phong Nha Discovery and Oxalis-- and I can tell you that Oxalis takes very very good care of its customers and ensures that they have great guides who are fluent in English. If you're coming here to go to Son Doong, Hang En, or Tu Lan-- look them up. If you're looking for the standard tourist trap caves (which are impressively lit up and I quite enjoyed because of the various formations they had), then you can either go yourself through the Phong Nha Ke Bang visitor center, or just go with a tour that your hotel/homestay/hostel can easily arrange. 

If you're considering going there (and you don't camp often, like me), you might want to be prepared for what's ahead:

• Swallow Cave = swallow birds live here in addition to bats and both roost above you and because of gravity, well, shit falls quite often.
• Since shit is always falling, there is shit on the ground like everywhere. So I don't recommend walking barefoot (as I groggily did in the morning to go to the bathroom). In fact the area that we sat down to eat meals at had a tarp up, which was like only put in a month or so ago. (Our guide said that eating was very interesting because you basically had to take the food and shove it into your mouth really fast before the poop hit your bowl.
• Bugs. Oh man, I had no clue what most of the bugs were that landed on me/near me/flew close to the light. Educate yourself on leeches before you come here. Just warning you.  There are scorpions and spiders in the cave.
• Tuck your pants into your socks and if it's raining, don't be like me and trudge through with your own tennis shoes (though I didn't get any blisters, but I did almost fall off the trail and did some natural mud slip'n'slides a few times. 
• Investing in the shoes that the guides wear (five-ten canyoneer 3) or something with a grippy sole is a great idea. Othewise you'll have to wear their Cambodian Army Boots which were not comfortable at all (however thick wool socks may save you from icky blisters).

• Long pants and sleeves are essential. If it's raining, you'll still want pants to protect you from all the various poisonous plants (there's more than just poison ivy). If it's not raining (Aka the mosquitoes are hungry) then you will get eaten alive (I saw a few people get 10+ bites on the way back).

It was quite a relaxing ride by train from Hanoi to Ninh Binh, although a bit rocky and bumpy in parts. There's rice growing all around the city!

We arrived (after a few frantic Google Maps checks to make sure that the previous 2 stops weren't Ninh Binh) around 11:30am (took the 9am out from Hanoi) and found ourselves not as close to our hotel as we had liked (apparently the train now stops at the new train station and although Google showed that the hotel is close to the train station, it didn't show both stations, just the old one).

It's a little bit eerie, stepping into this industrial countryside town. It's not quite as bustling as Hanoi and is way more spread out. It almost felt like a ghost town. I kept seeing all these folks waiting at their stores-- which made me wonder (because we did see a lot of people just sitting and relaxing in Hanoi too)-- what exactly is a typical day in the life of a Vietnamese person? Do they work? Or is it like they have specific seasons where tourists come by? In any case, it was odd, and it was a little strange to have so many pushy people try to get you to take a cab or go to their hotel. We had a tough time differentiating between who was trying to get us to buy something and who was just trying to help.

But hey, we came here for the view. (Or at least, that's why I dragged everyone else along-- I wanted less-touristy Vietnam and I certainly found it.) But as my cousin put it as we hiked up the ~500 steps to the top of Hang Mua to get a good view of Tam Coc: we tortured ourselves so that we too could take "stock photos."

Before getting to Hang Mua (Mua Cave-- pronounced Hang M-oa  emphasis on the oa) we took a taxi to Trang An, a local limestone cave area that is very scenic (and apparently is a newer tourist attraction as it was built to attract Chinese and Vietnamese tourists around 2010. 

After all this we decided to head back to Ninh Binh for dinner. However, it was pouring by the time we arrived at our hotel and we didn't want to chance it with the lightning and thunder going on outside. Finally when it seemed to calm down for a bit I ventured out on the town with my cousins. Boy, is this a sleepy town. We crossed over the river, and noticed that there weren't a lot of restaurants so we headed back to where we saw all the people hanging out.

It so happened that we found a Vietnamese BBQ/Hot Pot restaurant (heated by real charcoal)! Missing my summer BBQ I decided we'd eat BBQ (meat!!). If we could only decipher the menu....  Many Google searches later, I'm still at a loss as to what these places are called, and what exactly it was that we ate.