Travelling is the only time when taking 4 naps in a day is remotely acceptable. In my defence, it was off the back of a night bus that dropped us off at 4am, but still. Bleary eyed, we set off to explore the magnificent caves of Phong Nha National Park.

The world’s largest cave can be found and explored here but only if you’re willing to sit on a year long waiting list and have a cool £3k to spare. Instead, we opted for the Paradise and Dark Caves, both appropriated named. The former is a 31.4km long cave, with the first 1km opened up to tourists - far and away the most astounding cave I’ve ever been in for it’s sheer scale and beauty. As a wet cave, the stalactites and stalagmites are growing at the rate of about 0.3mm every year. Our minds wandered back to how the first people to discover the cave must have felt, navigating in the dark and being bewildered by a seemingly endless cave was. A brief power cut whilst we were inside gave us some clue to how they felt too!

The latter cave was unlit, hence the name. Donning some head-torches, we zip lined across a river before swimming through shiver inducing waters into the cave itself to lark about in the mud baths and career down slopes made of mud. Kayaking back across the river, we rescued a few other tourists who had attempted to swim back - slowly changing the negatively boozy reputation of Brits abroad one search and rescue mission at a time.

As a bonus, we also managed to watch the Leicester game in a local’s kitchen after a tip off from another local. Winner!

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