Son Doong Cave Expedition with Oxalis: What To Expect

Guess who’s finally back with a Travel Tuesday post!?!?!? (The last one I wrote was back in December 2022 so this is kinda big news for me.) I recently returned from a ~2-week trip to Vietnam! The main reason for this trip was to go on the Son Doong Cave Expedition — we ended up adding a few more caving trips to our overall itinerary because whyyyy not.

Hang Son Doong is the largest natural cave in the world. It’s 5x larger than what used to be the largest cave in the world (Deer Cave, located in Malaysia), and is so ginormous that it has its own ecosystem (+ even clouds!)! This post is about what to expect/what’s included in the tour itself. I’ll be talking more about my actual experiences in a different post! :]

For the record, this is not a sponsored post (…although if Oxalis Adventure would like to sponsor a future tour for me, I’d be more than overjoyed because I really loved my experience with them, hence my raving about this).

Son Doong Cave Expedition with Oxalis Adventure: What To Expect

Cost

The 6-day, 5-night tour costs $3000 USD (US Dollar), or 72,000,000 VND (Vietnamese dong). $3k is definitely a hefty price (at one point, this sum could’ve fed me for a good 5 years!), so what’s included?

• VAT fee (10%)
• Entrance Fee + Environment Service ($600)
• Management Fee/Supervision ($20)
• Pickup/drop off at the Dong Hoi airport/train station (~1 hour away)
  • We didn’t end up utilizing this since we took an overnight bus from Hanoi + had another multi-day tour booked the day afterward.
• A giant entourage team of 1 tour guide, 1 caving/safety expert, 6 safety assistants, 2 chefs, 17 porters
  • The porters will carry up to 7kg’s worth of your stuff, so our day packs were very, very light.
• Transportation to/from Phong Nha National Park
• Accommodations
  • 1st night at the Son Doong Bungalow
  • 3 nights in the cave with tents (can choose to stay in a single or a double)
  • Last night at the Chay Lap Farmstay
• Prepared meals (welcome dinner after the safety briefing/overview on the first night, breakfast/lunch/dinner for all the days that you’re camping, as well as a gala dinner at the farmstay when you return + snacks in between)

This is the lunch we had on day 1 at the village before we trekked over to Hang En (the first cave)!

• Safety equipment (e.g. helmets, harnesses, headlights, gloves, ropes, caving lights, spare batteries, rescue equipment, satellite phone)
  • I bought a pair of trekking shoes on sale before I left, but they ran small and I ended up with 2 still-numb toes + 1 very black toenail after an 8 mile hike the weekend before our trip in my attempt to “break em’ in.” Quite fortunately, if you don’t have suitable trekking shoes, you can loan a pair of army boots from them as long as your shoe size is between sizes 36-46 (EUR). They are pretty minimalistic with no real arch support (they’ll stick in a little insole for you). Wear thick socks to prevent blisters. I have pretty flat feet and wore them daily for 2 multi-day tours (~7-8 days total) and didn’t get a single blister, but YMMV.
• Camping gear (tent, sleeping mat, pillow, sleeping bag, camp slippers, water bottle, water pump/filters, semi-dry bag, first aid kit)
• Travel insurance (up to max compensation of 10 million VND, or about $426 USD)
  • We bought additional travel insurance through World Nomads just in case!

Hot food on a cold rainy morning = the best. <3

Booking

My brother first read about Son Doong back in 2013 and has wanted to explore it ever since. When he asked me if I’d be interested in going too, in what universe would I have said no?!

Only 1000 people are allowed to visit each year + each group is comprise dof a max of 10 guests! Spots fill super quickly — we filled our applications out back in 5/2022 and hoped for the best!

Difficulty

The Son Doong Expedition’s difficulty level is 6 (hard). The scale is based on an average fitness level, so you definitely don’t have to be a marathon runner/mountaineer to be able to complete this. I wrote that I’d climbed Half Dome, Rose Peak, and the Rae Lakes Loop Trail and was good to go/didn’t find any aspect of it to be very difficult. It’s in your best interest to fill the form out correctly because they can and will turn people back if they don’t seem like they can handle it.

Atop the “Wedding Cake” in Son Doong!

The trek consists of:

• 17 km (~10.6 miles) of hiking on rocky mountain trails
  • When we went, it was pouring rain on the first day so everything was extra slippery. There were also a bunch of river crossings, the highest of which was about waist-deep for me. The last day included climbing down a ton of sharp rocks in the jungle, so we kept our helmets on throughout until we’d passed all of them.
• 800m (~2625 feet) of steep climbing + 8 km (~5 miles) of caving (involves a good amount of scrambling — harnesses provided for via ferrata + knotted ropes also available at the especially steep locations)
• Last day also includes 90m (~295ft) steep climb (up the “Wall of Vietnam) from the bottom of the cave passage to the top!
• Swimming (optional – lifejacket required)

Weather/Climate

Tours run from January to the end of August every year. (Rainy season is intense so it’s not safe to operate tours during that time.)

I asked Tha (our tour guide) when his favorite time of year was + he said each season has its own benefits. From what I gather, February is a great time if you really want to capture the ethereal sunbeam photos from inside the cave but temperatures are pretty cold then (especially in the cave). In the summer months, the swimming in the lakes in the cave is likely super refreshing, but trekking in the jungle will be freakishly hot. April/May is when it’s not overwhelmingly hot, things are all blooming or green in the jungle, and mist starts settling in various parts of the cave — I’m glad we went when we did (mid-May)!

Safety

The above (turning people back) is mainly due to safety concerns. I really appreciated how much emphasis they placed on safety. Rescue have to be done on foot and could take hours. There is no wifi/reception and no path for a car, let alone even a bike. Several years back, one of the safety assistants cut out leg holes in their pack so that he could carry one of the guests back to civilization after she injured her leg!)

At one of the river crossings!

Our caving expert did have a satellite phone in case of emergency (which our group fortunately did not have to utilize), and the staff can also communicate via walkie talkie across longer distances if needed. The safety assistants were also super proactive/attentive and any time the thought of “Oh, this looks like it could be slippery,” even crossed my mind, one of them would magically appear in front of me to either lend me a strong arm to hold onto or to advise me on where to put my feet, if needed.

• Have you ever been to a cave?
• Do you think you’d ever go camping in a cave (or on the Son Doong Cave Expedition?!)? I’ll be back next week with more on my actual experiences!
• Anything you’d want to know about this trip?
• Isn’t it good that we didn’t decide to watch The Descent before going on this trip? (…We did that prior to going on a caving tour in West Virginia and really should not have. I will write about that hopefully-soon too!)