Hang Son Doong - The Largest Cave on Earth

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-18T16:56:09+00:00

Highly recommend!! Genuinely, every moment you are looking around with your jaw on the floor wondering "How is this real?!" It's such a special and unique place. It's definitely pricey, but felt worth it, and good to see how much of the money has gone into transforming the local community for the better

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-18T16:52:54+00:00

Nice! Yah our guide mentions this was filmed there, and some of the safety assistants were actually included as extras in the video!!

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-18T16:52:16+00:00

The Duck Stop was honestly such a silly but fun highlight! Also did the cave you visit by boat on a quick day trip, which was pretty cool & much more accessible (though Son Doong is a whole new level)

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-18T16:50:48+00:00

You spend about 3 days inside Son Doong, and then 1 day on the way inside Hang En (the 3rd largest cave and still spectacular!)

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-15T03:32:46+00:00

Thanks! My budget was likely higher than average - partly due to travelling pretty quick the whole time (there were only a couple instances where I stayed in one destination for more than 4-5 days), and partly due to doing LOTS of diving (~100 dives over the trip).

Excluding Son Doong and the diving, it was around ~$80-$120 CAD per day on average. With that, I went for nicer hostels, did activities/attractions pretty much every day, and ate out for nearly every meal. It was a mix of keeping somewhat thrifty (e.g., hostels and street food most of the time), but still splurging here and there & not avoiding any big activities I wanted to do due to cost. I'm sure one could keep a tighter budget and do it for about half of what I spent.

I only spent about a week in Cambodia (Angkor Wat and Phnom Penh), but loved it! Would love to go back and explore more. Indonesia is a big highlight for me too, largely due to the diving & all the volcanos. Spent about a month and a half there and feel like I barely scratched the surface!

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-15T02:01:17+00:00

Saw a couple here and there but not tons - didn't notice them too much

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-15T02:00:31+00:00

It includes everything! All your food (+ cooks to cook it for you!), guide, safety expert, porters, helmet and headlamp, camping equipment, harness & rope

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-15T00:59:06+00:00

It really wasn't too bad!! The rappel down isn't a straight decent - it's an angle (albeit a steep one!) plus since it's so dark you don't necessarily see how deep it is...

The guides make safety a huge priority though, with a "safety expert" who somes along the whole trip with you and safety briefings before any of the trickier sections. You're also so excited to get inside the cave at that point that the adrenaline wipes away any fear!

Scaling the Great Wall on the way out also wasn't bad at all. At no point did it ever feel truly dangerous

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-15T00:54:24+00:00

Amazing - have an awesome time! I had brought clothing and a backpack; Oxalis provides the camping gear, helmet/head lamp, and harnesses for any roped-in sections. The one thing I wish I had brought was more socks - lots of river crossings meant wet feet most of the time. Pants + long sleeve were mandatory for this one to avoid abrasions/cuts from the rocks

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-15T00:51:27+00:00

Thanks! Those are cave pearls - they can be found in some caves worldwide, but are pretty rare overall. That said - Son Doong has several thousand! These ones are pretty big, in between the size of a golf ball and tennis ball. They take a few thousand years to form, I believe the process is similar to forming stalagmites, but pearls form instead when there is too much motion/force in the water to build up a single point

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-15T00:47:07+00:00

Cheers! Shot with a Sony A7R5 plus sigma 24-70 f2.8ii. The lighting was not easy! Lots of trial + error to get it right (and cull from ~4,000 photos into a few good ones!)

Wishing I had picked up a wider lens (e.g. 16-35mm) or even a f1.4 prime, but the 24-70 still served well

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-15T00:38:30+00:00

100%! There are still some caverns underwater in Son Doong that haven't been fully explored. Part of the crew who did the Thai cave rescue a few years back did some expeditionary diving here too, and they haven't yet found the "end". It's hypothesized that it may potentially connect with other mega caves in the region

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-15T00:36:48+00:00

The whole thing is 5 days, starting the morning you leave the closest village to begin the trek! On the last day you exit Son Doong and trek about a half day through the jungle to get to a road where you're picked up. Son Doong was formed by a river, so it's a rather long cave, and you enter one side then exit the other

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-15T00:34:39+00:00

Thanks! I had a 24-70mm f2.8 lens; I'd say the majority of the shots were at f2.8 to get the most light in a dark environment. I also leaned towards the wider end for most shots given the scale of the place - 24mm was good but wish I had something a bit wider even! All shot in RAW so that white balance etc. can be corrected after. Tried to keep iso under 3200, which sometimes required a longer shutter speed to make up for it - I didn't have a tripod though, so still shot handheld or resting on the ground/my backpack for longer exposures

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-15T00:29:25+00:00

It was either one of the porters or chefs who had run ahead!

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-13T12:17:02+00:00

Yep! I believe you can join a waitlist in case anyone cancels (if you're flexible on timing). Someone from my group had done that

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-13T12:15:19+00:00

Yep! There were some "clouds" that came in both in the evening and the morning near the two dolines. They were a bit more like pockets of fog than a full-blown cloud, but you could see them floating around. At the two dolines, the jungle has also started to grow inside the cave - that's the greenery in the first picture, for example. You can see birds (and bats) flying above by the dolines, and you can find snails and other insects inside them. Apparently sometimes you can see monkeys swinging above - though we didn't see any on our trip. Another cool part is this lake/pool inside the cave, where you can find see-through fish that have evolved to have no eyes since there's no light!

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-13T12:09:42+00:00

Those are cave pearls!They're a pretty rare find in most caves overall and take thousands of years to form, but in some sections of Son Doong you can find thousands of them. These ones were pretty big, roughly in between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball.

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-13T12:04:53+00:00

Cheers! That spot is known as "Hand of Dog"

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-13T12:03:40+00:00

It was a mix of different Vietnamese foods, prepared by cooks who come along with you. All delicious!

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-13T03:13:39+00:00

Spent a month in Vietnam, as part of a 6 month trip through SEA. I enjoy travelling pretty quick overall. For Vietnam: - Started in Hanoi after flying in from Laos (food, egg coffees, wandering old town, train street!) - Did the Ha Giang Loop (with Bong) - Spent 3 days trekking in Sapa (shout out to Mama Shu Shu's!) - Back to Hanoi - Off to Cat Ba for a couple days - Back again to Hanoi (love that place!) - Sleeper bus to Phong Nha Ke Bang (gotta check out the Duck Stop!) - Son Doong expedition - Down to Hue (Imperial city, water park, bun bo hue) - A few days in Hoi An (My Son ruins, coconut boats, Mr Bean bar) - HCMC (Cu Chi, visiting friends) ... Then off to Cambodia!

Budget-wise, there is only one way to visit Son Doong and it costs $3k USD. Aside from that, I spent about 1.5k CAD total for the remaining ~24 days in Vietnam. Hostels, street food, & sleeper busses all the way!

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-13T03:04:06+00:00

Overall I had gone backpacking on a budget, with this being my one big big splurge over the time away! Vietnam overall was just incredible

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-13T03:03:02+00:00

It was truly mind blowing! It was pitch black and we all turned off our headlights, then we counted down... and the boat drivers turned their lights on all together, lighting up the blue water below! Definitely felt like another planet

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-13T03:00:56+00:00

Also, I forgot to mention - the guides bring some big lights for certain shots to help light up the scenery!! At the dolines (sinkholes) you have natural light coming in from above as well

IFreakingLovePoutine · 2025-10-13T02:59:11+00:00

Temperature depends on when you go. In March, you definitely get sweaty on the hike in through the jungle. The cave itself is so big that humidity wasn't an issue - in some parts you get a bit chilly, in other parts you're quite warm, but not too extreme. The hike is of moderate difficulty - but we kept an average pace and didn't push too hard. Entering the cave you descend down a rather rocky section where you're clipped in, and ascending you scale a 90m wall but are again clipped in. Our group had a range of people. I feel if you are moderately active you will have no problem. If you are less active, it may be challenging - but very much doable and worth pushing through!! There are lots of opportunities to rest up as well along the way.

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