Surprise Cave at Halong Bay

In the shiny morning, after a very mini breakfast with one croissant and a glass of juice we were ready for exploring a cave. Sung Sot or Surprise Grotto is on Bo Hon Island, and is one of the finest and widest grottoes of Halong Bay. To go there we had to go by a small boat again, passing a small floating village. We passed a wooden bridge with some boat sellers on the side of the bridge.


Some paved stone blocks have been built to make guests easier to reach the cave entrance. It’s still heavy for me who seldom does exercise :-). I was sweaty although the way was covered by trees. The scenery to Halong Bay was very beautiful seeing from the steps when reaching the cave. Many times I stopped to take beautiful pictures of the bay, although I’m not a professional photographer, the scenery itself could create a magnificent picture. Lucky that it’s not too high, there were many visitors came to the cave from different junks, so we had to be patient queuing.

In the cave, so many stalactites hang from the high ceiling and stalagmites created a beautiful sculpture as if carving by God. Colorful lights were installed to create more stunning environment. The cave is quite large, we felt such as in different world. It is partitioned into two chambers; the first one being similar to a wide theatre hall. The guide shows us a sculpture looked like a camel, Budha, Kwan Im, a horse, dragon head and tail, etc. The cave could be captured by camera without using flash, unfortunately I didn’t bring any tripot, my hand was not steady enough, so that most pictures were blurred.

We should go through a narrow passage to the second rooms, where a flow of light meets visitors, the chamber is so spacious. At the deepest point of the grotto, a "royal garden" appeared with a clear pond and a seemingly fascinating landscape of mountains. In the middle of the cave, there was a stalagmite such as giant turtle, where people threw coins there to wish for a good luck. On the way out of the cave, I still got a chance to take pictures with colorful stalactites and stalagmites as background.

All of us were tired, on the exit cave there was a bench to take a rest with pretty Halong Bay scenery as the background. If you like shopping, there was also a small shop selling pearl and some Vietnam souvenirs. It’s windy, with beautiful scenery, I felt that I didn’t want to go back to the ship, I wanted to stay longer, unfortunately we could not do it. All our friends from the same junk have been returned to the boat, they were waiting for us.

We had to rush to step down the stairs, but I still had a chance to take some more beautiful pictures. After finishing the stairs, we had to cross a long bridge where there was some Vietnamese selling snacks, water, etc on the boat. This scenery were completed the scenery, the ethnic situation was very high and made people love to see it. The visit to the cave is quite worthy, beside seeing the beautiful of God creation, it’s also healthy because you did exercise by climbing the stairs