Hang Va Expedition - Worth Every Penny Spent ( Part 2)

Hi everyone,

We hope things are going well for you. This week's weather in Phong Nha looks great; it is neither too hot nor too cold. After a lengthy quarantine due to Covid-19, now is the ideal time to take a trip for yourself. Today, the second day of the Expedition, I will take you to explore Hang Va.

Phong Nha view in the morning - By Nicky Tran

The Hang Va expedition's highlight is absolutely Day 2. I got a bit of a hangover as I drank local rice wine (the porters called it is “Happy Water”) and had to fight sleep in the morning. The singing of the birds and the noise from the monkey woke me up totally. I tried to take some shots at the camp. We had a nice breakfast at 8:00 a.m. before exploring Hang Va, a fantastic cave. Our nice and fun guide told us how to use the harness and cow-tails and how to clip karabiners into the rope. Our safety assistants reminded us to put caving lights, helmets and gloves on and did not forget to check the lights. We descended the steep entrance to Hang Va. Because the way down was rocky and slippery, we must proceed slowly and with caution.

A group photo before exploring Hang Va

The porters called it is “Christmas tree”
The Early Morning Dew

The Early Morning Dew

The Early Morning Dew

Hang Va's entrance is a collapse in the floor of a small, steep valley bounded by cliffs. A 20 m descent led us into an active stream passage that is about 10m high and wide on average and can be followed upstream or downstream. A rope will be used to secure the descent into the entrance. We all asked to always use sit harnesses and cow tails that are clipped into the rope. Harnesses can be worn for the duration of the trip, as they will be required later on in the cave. We were introduced that we had to use a harness 3 times in Hang Va.

Hang Va Cave Entrance
We arrived early enough so that we could swim in a downstream pool inside Hang Va before continuing upstream. We spent most of our time walking through the river, climbing up and down, and squeezing between the rocks. The rock here was beautiful, and even more beautiful if we had the higher lumen lights to sight on them. The river passage's water level reached my hip level (I am 170cm tall), so be told to prepare to get wet for about 4 hours, but the water was extremely clean and cool.
Stunning View in The Cave

Rock formations look so nice

When you reached the end of the wet passage, we needed to re-use the harness to carefully ascend to the high-level passage. This high-level area will undoubtedly astound us with its stunning formations, which are extremely rare throughout the world. We had plenty of time right here for photography with the help of high-quality lights (Hope Light R4+).

Please stay still guys - Rope Traverse into the Tower Passage
From here, our safety team strictly told us to stay on the path to avoid damaging the fragile cave formation. We continued to travel further in to see the special formation, Tower Cones. These formations are extremely rare, especially in such large numbers and at such heights. They, like other cave formations, are formed by calcite.

Photo by Oxalis team

Photo by Oxalis Team
There are several hundred calcite cones. They are all extremely steep and reach heights of around 2m. Many of the tops are at the same level, which corresponds to the level of the water in the calcite pool before it dried out. They're covered in soft mud, but it's only a few millimetres thick on top of the calcite. When the mud was washed away after the flooding season, the cones reveal a complex structure.

Special Tower Cones - Photo by Ryan
About 12 am, we returned to the camp by the same way, I put the dry clothes on and had lunch with the team. We then trekked back to the road via a different rocky route to the pickup point around 3:00 p.m where cold drinks waited for us to cheer up after the long trek. The best Huda beer I had ever. Our driver returned us to the Oxalis Office around 4:00 p.m to take a shower and wrap everything we left here before the expedition.
Photo By Ryan - Special Tower Cones - Photo By Ryan

Photo by my teammate Trung Hieu

The cave was much more difficult than I expected, becoming quite steep and demanding in more than making up for the trekking. The employees were always super helpful, informative, attentive, and fluent in English. The food was also fantastic. There are not enough words to describe how amazing t the experience was. Everything about it was well-organized, safe, environmentally conscious, and well worth every penny. It was a wonderful experience, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to my family and friends.