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./.
