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stalactites, all hundreds of millions of
years in the making.
Discovered in 2005, Thien Duong
Cave resembles a landscape painting
and has been developed as a tourism
site by the Truong Thinh Group. This
prestigious construction group also
owns the five-star Sun Spa Resort &
Spa, a high-end resort with 236 rooms
and a cluster of luxury villas and bunga-
lows which is certainly raising the bar
for luxury tourism in Quang Binh.
Furthermore, nearby Son Doong
Cave, the world’s largest, has become
the hottest spot in the world and the
most expensive tour in Vietnam. Ac-
cording to Oxalis, the travel agency
offering adventure tours to the cave,
there is a fixed number of tourists for
2014 and hundreds of others are wait-
ing for the 2015 and 2016 schedule,
with local authorities imposing a limit
of four 6 day, 5 night tours each month.
Over a thousand international tourists
also missed out on the tour, which cost
some $3,000 per person, due to health
and fitness reasons.
Not many destinations in Vietnam
have as many advantages as in Quang
Binh. A small province, it nonetheless
contains varied geography, from the
forests, hills and plains to the coastal
strip of sand dunes. That’s why Quang
Binh’s tourism sector has developed
more strongly after launching different
types of tours, including sea tours, spir-
itual tours, Phong Nha-Ke Bang tours
and tours of caves.
To create many more opportunities
for those who love to enjoy the wonder
of nature, Quang Binh, in coordination
with the Vietnam Helicopter Corpora-
tion, has launched helicopter tours of
heritage sites and other destinations
in the area, including Khe Gat, En Cave
and Son Doong Cave. The maiden flight
carried provincial leaders and ten jour-
nalists from Dong Hoi City on a one-
hour tour of Quang Binh’s attractions.
The helicopter flies over the
85,700-hectare (211,769-acre) park
before flying over the Garden of Edam
– a jungle around Son Doong Cave. The
helicopter also lands at the entrance
to En (Swift) Cave, which goes 1,645
meters back into the mountain, making
it the world’s third largest.
A flight carrying 22 passengers
costs $3,400, or nearly $150 per per-
son. The service enables tourists to
view Phong Nha Ke Bang from a great
height and can also provide emergency
aid to those on adventure tours to the
Son Doong, En and Tu Lan caves.
With an incredibly diverse and at-
tractive mix of natural attractions and
some of world’s most beautiful and
magnificent caves, together with stun-
ning beaches and high-end resorts,
travel agencies are confident that
Quang Binh province can succeed.
QUANG BINH PROVINCE IN FOCUS
18
timeout
Light floods into the cavern via a
doline