The Son Doong cave in Vietnam is the largest cave in the world. A tour inside the cave is something extraordinary; it contains a jungle, a river and it has plenty of room for a skyscraper with 40 floors!
The enormous cave is located 280 miles south of the capital Hanoi, in the Vietnamese national park Phon Nha-Ke Bang. Tag along in this underground world and be inspired by nature’s beauty.
Son Goong translates to mountain river cave. It was created 2-5 million years ago by river water eroding away the limestone underneath the mountain. It was found in 1991 by a local farmer, but the first people who actually explored the cave were British experts in 2009.
The cave as a whole is estimated to be 87 miles long.
It contains its own animal life, lakes, rain-forest, beaches and a river.
Many caves have relics from a prehistoric age, like statues or paintings on the mountain walls. But nothing compared to what has been found in Son Doong.
The first tourists visited the cave in 2013.
Guided tours are available. They last for 7 days and visitors can spend their nights camping inside the cave. The total cost per person is around $2300.
The cave has also rare pearls that are formed when water laden with minerals dripping from a cave’s ceiling, falls too quickly to form a stalagmite. Instead, the dripping water forms a small ball of mineral deposits that grows into a small mineral pearl.