Spanish magazine spotlights Vietnam cave

Spanish writer Mark Jenkin has extolled the wonderful beauty of Hang Son Doong (Mountain River Cave) in the world natural heritage site Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in Vietnam’s central Quang Binh province.
Spanish writer Mark Jenkin has extolled the wonderful beauty of Hang Son Doong (Mountain River Cave) in the world natural heritage site Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in Vietnam’s central Quang Binh province.

In a reportage entitled “Vietnam Cave” published in the National Geographic magazine in January 2011, M. Jenkin wrote “There is a jungle inside Vietnam’s mammoth cavern.”

The passage to Hang Son Doong is perhaps 300 feet wide, the ceiling nearly 800 feet tall: room enough for an entire New York City block of 40-storey buildings, he wrote, adding that “And the end is out of sight.”

M. Jenkin cited his teammate Jonathan Sims, who was a member of the first expedition to enter the cave, as saying that his team could explore two and a half miles of Hang Son Doong before a 200-foot wall of muddy calcite stopped them. They named it the Great Wall of Vietnam.

Measuring 200m high and 150m wide, the cave, named Son Doong by Khanh who leads a British caving team to explore the cave, is believed to be almost twice the size of the current record holder, Deer Cave in Sarawak Malaysia.

Located in Phong Nha-Ke Bang grotto system, the cave is a limestone region of 2,000 sq.km./.

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