Vietnam - About the Country

Vietnam, a rather poor Asian country, is famous for the Vietnam war in the middle of the 20th century (locally called the American War). After the Americans lost the war, the country became socialist and was not reachable for western tourists. Now, after the end of the Cold War, the country becomes open to tourists. They are rather welcome, as they bring money to the poor country, still traveling has some difficulties and restrictions. Tourism is contributing 7.5% of the total GDP. Vietnam hosted some 13 million tourists in 2017. Some 9.7 million of them, came from Asia, especially China, South Korea, and Japan. There were 1.9 million visitors from Europe, 600,00 from the U.S.A., and 370,000 from Australia.

The currency is the Vietnamese đồng, which has very high inflation. If you find ten-year-old prices on one of our pages, the price might be actually 10 times from then. However, it might be the same in Dollar or Euro. Entrance fees of 100,000 look quite impressive, but currently that's 4 US Dollars [2024]. And while use show caves charge entrance fees between 30 and 40 USD, that's a real bargain.

Show Caves

As other countries in this area, Vietnam has a lot of karst, tower karst with many caves. In the last decades, numerous show caves were developed, infrastructure was created, and the country now has 35 show caves [2024] and most of them have safe trails, electric light, and more or less western standard. Unfortunately, they adopted the use of coloured light from other Asian countries. Guided tours are uncommon, people walk on their own through the caves following the trails. The fantasy names of stalagmites and stalactites are written of signs. Sometimes they are accompanied by someone who is there for security, not for guiding.

We found that lately the published material about show caves on the web increased, the texts were more elaborate and there were great pictures. But after a while, we realized that completely different caves from completely different parts of the country use the same pictures and insist that this picture is from their cave. The descriptions are praising the caves quite overwhelming, but the facts in the text are sparse. We think this is most likely not only a scam, its also copyright infringement, and unfortunately, it makes those sources completely unreliable. They are published by hotels, boat or tour operators or by local guides, and if they have no pictures, they simply use ones they found on the web. It seems there are no cave administrations and the caves normally have neither a website nor contact data. We can only guess that they are managed by some kind of government institution. However, they also do not publish any reliable info.

Serious publications are generally not online and only in Vietnamese, and so they are more or less inaccessible. The main source of information about caves, especially in Quang Binh, was the former president of Viet Nam's Association of Caves and Grottoes. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Quang My was also the Dean of the Department of Geography, University of Natural Sciences. He wrote almost 300 publications about caves, especially show caves, numerous are bilingual.

Cave Trekking

We have found a massive increase on cave trekking tours. It seems multi-day caving tours in huge cave systems are popular with foreign tourists and provide a lot of income. The most famous company is Oxalis Adventure, which offers tours in the Phong Na Khe Bang National Park, where several huge caves are located. The most famous is CaveHang Sơn Đoòng which is said to be the "largest" cave of the world. We are not able to actually list them, as tours, caves and even companies change quite frequently. Such trips are sold with online booking, and they do not even give open hours or dates, they simply link to their online booking portal. However, we strongly recommend Oxalis, because the exist for decades, the guides are trained by the cavers of the BCRA, and they are the only ones who have the right to guide through the most impressive caves.

Cave Temples

Another important group of touristic caves are cave temples, often Buddhist, but other far east religions and the Vietnamese folk religion also used caves for temples. The number of Buddha statues is overwhelming, especially as only 5 % of the population are actually Buddhists. Often speleothems are interpreted as religious symbols. There are altars, sculptures, incense cones, and yearly festival. We generally recommend avoiding such festivals because they are crowded. Basic rules for churches apply: decent behaviour, decent clothes, especially the women, be careful when taking pictures. Churches are often free and open all day, many are closed during the night though, and an increasing number starts to collect entrance fees. As the caves are quite spectacular, such temples generally offer a lot of cave passages and speleothems beneath the Buddha sculptures.

Military Bunkers

Other quite important underground tourist sites are the bunkers which played a role in the Vietnam War. Natural and even more frequent artificial caves were used as air raid shelter, as bunker, or as hideout. Some of the artificial caves were opened to tourists lately. It seems they widened the extremely narrow and low tunnels to fit the size of American tourists. Finally, money obtained what bombs and napalm could not, and opened the bunkers. The Viet Cong bunkers are often Historic Monuments.

Show Mines

The country has various resources and numerous mines. The most important are antimony, iron ore, manganese, ferrite, zinc, tin, copper, bauxite, gold, gemstones, kaolin and mineral water. Mines and is of great economic importance, but unfortunately, there is not a single show mine open to the public. The plan to open a gold mine for tours failed, the mining company is now bankrupt, and the mine was finally closed by the government due to illegal mining. A new attempt to create tours to coal mines was not realized in almost a decade, so it is likely it will also never happen.

It seems the country lacks a mindset or social element which would create show mines. We guess they are firsthand owned by the government or international companies, and both are too inflexible. Also, the bureaucrats actually have nothing to gain but may be held responsible in case of failure.

General

As a tropic country, there are different diseases, which are unknown to Europeans or Americans, so before you go check the medical requirements. Immunization against tetanus, diphtheria, polio and hepatitis A and B is recommended. High-risk groups - which includes speleologists and tourists doing cave trekking - should also be vaccinated against typhoid and rabies.

The climate varies considerably from region to region, and during the year. There is a dry season from November to April, the monsoon causes the wet season. It is preferable to travel during the dry season, better weather, no floods, no slippery trails. It's also a little cooler. In general, it is a warm country, humid, and sun protection and moskito repellent are basic precautions for travellers.