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#Vietnam - Visit to Son Doong Cave among top adventurous experiences

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 For British travellers, an expedition to Son Doong in Vietnam, the world’s largest cave, is among the greatest adventures they would like to undertake.

British TV channel Dave, a panel of travel experts and editors of U.K. tabloid Daily Mail polled 2,000 people aged 40 or under earlier this week for a survey of ‘greatest adventures around the world and across the U.K.’

Of them, 24 percent said they want to explore Son Doong Cave in the central province of Quang Binh, dubbed Vietnam’s ‘Kingdom of Caves,’ putting it fifth in the top 20 adventure list.

Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa, topped the list (37 percent), followed by trekking along the Inca trail in Peru (35 percent), rafting in the Grand Canyon in the U.S. (31 percent) and descending into Thrihnukagigur volcano in the U.K. (29 percent).

The rest of the top 10 also included dog sledding to witness the aurora borealis in Norway, kayaking in Arctic fjords in Denmark, climbing to the Everest Base Camp in Nepal, cruising the Antarctic, and cage diving with sharks in South Africa.

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 Howard Limbert, a former head of the British Caving Association, and his wife Deb spent nearly 13 years surveying caves in Vietnam since the early 1990s. In 2009 they concluded their initial exploration and declared Son Doong the world's largest cave.

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Son Doong opened to tourists in 2013 and the five kilometer-long system, which is 150 meters high and 200 meters wide, contains at least 150 individual caves, a dense subterranean jungle and several underground rivers.

Due to limited space, registration for Son Doong tours must be made well in advance. According to Oxalis, now the only company licensed to take tourists to the cave, only 300 slots are available this year.

A four-day expedition costs $3,000, and there are buses running from Hanoi to Dong Hoi, the capital town of Quang Binh, and then to the park.

The Quang Binh government recently increased the number of tourists allowed to visit the cave in a year from 640 to 900.

The tour is growing in popularity, and with Son Doong getting prominent coverage from the National Geographic, CNN and Good Morning America, Phong Nha-Ke Bang has become the go-to destination in Vietnam for adventurous travelers

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Source - VN Express

#Thailand, the land of festivals

 

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 We’ll start with Songkran because that’s the start of the Thai new year. It’s held on April 13. Having already blown most of the budget on fireworks for the western new year on January 1 and the Chinese New Year festivities, this time they use water as a means of ‘purification’, saying goodbye to the country’s hot season and welcoming the monsoonal rains. It involves a lot of water. In the past it was a gentle festival held at temples washing Buddha images.

It’s meant to be like this…

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  Fireworks, colour, smoke, noise, costumes, absence of occupational health and safety. That could describe any of the many, many festivals held around Thailand each year. Different regions, different festivals. Some reflect an ancient culture and a rich history, other make absolutely no sense but we enjoy them anyway. We’ll go through some of the main ones and a few you’ll NEVER see anywhere else in the world.

But it’s actually like this!

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 Somehow it’s morphed into a huge water fight, in some places, running over many days up to week (in Chiang Mai and parts of Pattaya). Ladeling water gently onto Buddha statues has been replaced by all-out water fights, loud music, foam and a party that has no rules.

If you’re outside during Songkran, especially in the main tourist zones, you WILL get splashed, probably drenched. The more the authorities try and play down the fun in Songkran the more tourists arrive each year determined to party in an event that’s somewhere between a video-game and the last half of ‘Titanic’.

And that’s just ONE festival!

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 The Vegetarian Festival, principally held in Phuket with it’s Chinese heritage, is an assault on all your senses. Parades are held around the island by various community groups with participants wearing white and followed up by either one or many mah-song. These mah-song have been ‘possessed’ by a spirit and display tourettes-like ticks, grunts and choreography that suggests their claims may indeed be true. If it’s all an act, it’s a very convincing one because, apart from all the cavorting down the street, they also have their cheeks and other parts of their body pierced – not by an earring or something tame like that – we’re talking spears, swords, petrol pumps, guns. It’s insane! These days there’s an ambulance following behind and probably more mah-song succumb to blood loss than is ever reported.

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 Phi ta khon (or Ghost Festival) is held in the Dan Sai district of north-eastern Thailand (near the Lao border) each year and usually follows a parade of people dressed up in rags with ghost masks.

Phi Ta Khon is the name given to a group of celebrations held over three days in the province of Loei. The most striking is the first day, the Ghost Festival itself, when the town residents invite the protection of the river spirit Phra U-Pakut, and then parade wearing the ghosts masks made of husks and coconut leaves.

But they also carry with them large phallic axes which are meant to reflect… oh, Google it.

 In Esan and around the Laos border areas there are many rocket festivals each year around May to June. Probably the biggest is the Yasothon Bun Bang Fai Rocket Festival. Imagine groups building their own rocket with the winner able to fire their rocket to the highest altitude. Like Songkran, the idea is to welcome in the forthcoming wet season (by piercing the sky to encourage rain).

The rockets used to be made out of bamboo but are more likely to be constructed out of PVC pipes these days and powered by ‘black powder’ which is regulated by certain rules (we doubt this claim!!). So there’s gun powder, loud music, alcohol and men in competition to fire home-made rockets high into the Esan sky – what could possible go wrong?! Some of the rockets reach heights of several kilometres and can travel a lot further down range.

Read more about the rocket festivals HERE.

 

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 Chinese New Year is big in China and it’s also huge in Thailand. Partly because there are many ethnic Thai-Chinese born in Thailand but also because there are so many Chinese visiting the Kingdom these days. The Chinese New Year festivities stretch from shopping centre sales to regional street parades to ceremonies for families and businesses.

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For a Buddhist country, Christmas is ironically enthusiastically celebrated. It involves presents, eating, celebrations, coloured lights and people spending money so it was always going to fly in Thailand. Thais remain completely bemused by Santa Claus, ‘baby Jesus’ and Christmas carols but, commercially, they’ve certainly embraced it now.

I have never seen better decorations or a celebration of Christmas than I have in Bangkok. My best Christmas moment was when I found a statue of Santa Claus nailed to a cross – a slight cultural faux pas where they’d confused Easter and Christmas and come up with a perfectly ‘Thai’ Christmas decoration.

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Source - The Thaiger