Spanish writer Mark Jenkin has extolled the wonderful beauty of Son Doong (Mountain River Cave) in Quang Binh central province.

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

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 Son Doong before a 200-foot wall of muddy calcite stopped them.

They named it the Great Wall of Vietnam.

The passage to 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.”

Located in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park recognized as a world natural heritage site by UNESCO in 2003, the cave, 200m high and 150m wide, is believed to be almost twice the size of the current record holder, Deer Cave in Sarawak Malaysia.

The massive cavern currently said to be the largest-known cave on Earth was discovered by a local man named Ho Khanh in 1991.

However, not until 2009 was it made known to the public when a group of British scientists from the British Cave Research Association, led by Howard and Deb Limbert, conducted a survey in Phong Nha-Ke Bang.

Source: Tuoi Tre