Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park - Tourist Activities

Tourist Activities

The park is accessible by road (National Road 1A or Hồ Chí Minh Highway 450 km south of Hanoi, 50 km north of Đồng Hới, 210 km north of Huế); by rail at Đồng Hới Railway Station on Hanoi-Saigon Railway; by air at Đồng Hới Airport 45 km south of the park. Tourists are served at the Tourism Service Center at Sơn Trạch commune of Bố Trạch District, the entrance of this center is located by Hồ Chí Minh Highway. Tourists are required to buy entrance ticket for package services, including entrance fee, boat service. Ecotourism tour (if needed) requires additional service fee. Tourists then are transported by boat along the Sơn River upstream to the Phong Nha and Paradise caves. The number of tourists has increased dramatically since the park was listed in UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. Quảng Bình Province has invested in upgrading the Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng visitor site to turn it into one of Vietnam's major tourist destinations.

Numerous eco-tourist projects have been licensed for development and the area is being heavily developed by the province to turn it into a major tourist site in Vietnam. Phong Nha–Kẻ Bàng is part of a tourism promotion campaign, "Middle World Heritage Road", which includes the ancient capital of Huế, the Champa relics of Mỹ Sơn, the city of Hội An, Nhã nhạc and the Space of Gong Culture in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.

Tourist activities in Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park are organized by local travel agencies and vary:

• Tour for expedition of caves and grottos in boats and with professional cave expedition means.
• Ecotourism, discovering the flora and fauna in this national park in the Kẻ Bàng Forest.
• Mountain climbing, trekking: There are extreme sloping mountains here with a height of over 1,000 m, which is a real challenge for adventurous climbers.

One of the adventure tour sites is boating upward on the Chay River into primitive forests, as the river becomes sinuous with several waterfalls and whirlpools until tourists arrive at Tro Mong. This tour sites have been surveyed and included in local travel agents besides cave exploration tour. In Phong Nha-Ke Bang park, there are is a 50 m-high waterfall, Chai Waterfall. There is a bull field called Ran Bo (Bull Field) because wild bulls usually comes and reproduce in mating season. There are also some interesting tourist attractions in this park like Nước Ngang ("Horizontal Spring"), a spring runs horizontally instead of vertically as usual; Ðá Nằm (Crouching Stone), a stone blockading a stream current; Chân Thớt (Chopping Board), a chopping-board-shaped stone. But above all, the most spectacular scene is this area is Nước Trồi (Surfacing Stream), a stream surfacing from the ground. Several streams here run for a long distance, then disappear under the ground. The provincial Centre for Phong Nha-Ke Bang's Ecotourism and Culture currently has 248 boats, creating jobs for 500 locals. Every boat has two trained boatmen earning VND70,000 per day. This income is relatively high for peasants in this province. This centre also launched a programme in 2000 to train former loggers to work as photographers taking pictures for tourists and about 300 former loggers are now doing this.

To facilitate the increasing flow of tourists to the site, the Dong Hoi Airport was constructed and put into operation in May 2008 with air link with Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport and air link with Ho Chi Minh City's Tan Son Nhat International Airport beginning from 1 July 2009.

Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng, together with Ha Long Bay and Fanxipan, is listed as a candidate for seven (7) new world natural wonders vote. On 12 February 2008 it was ranked 10th in the voting list In January 2009, the United States-based Los Angeles Times listed Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park in its recommended world's 29 destinations to visit in 2009.