"I'd rather live in a cave with a view of a palace than live in a palace with a view of a cave." Karl Pilkington
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Sơn Đoòng cave (Vietnamese: hang Sơn Đoòng), in Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park, Bố Trạch District, Quảng Bình Province, Vietnam, is the world's largest natural cave. Located near the Laos–Vietnam border, Hang Sơn Đoòng has an internal, fast-flowing subterranean river and the largest cross-section of any cave, worldwide, believed to be twice that of the next-largest passage. It is the largest known cave passage in the world by volume.
Its name, Hang Sơn Đoòng, is variously translated from Vietnamese as "cave of the mountain river" or "cave of mountains behind Đoòng village”. As a solutional cave, it was formed in soluble limestone and is believed to be between 2 and 5 million years old.
The cave contains some of the tallest known stalagmites in the world, which are up to 80 m tall Behind the ‘Great Wall of Vietnam’ were found cave pearls the size of baseballs, an abnormally large size. The cave's interior is so large that it could fit an entire New York block inside, including skyscrapers, or could have a Boeing 747 fly through it without its wings touching either side.
The entrance to Hang Sơn Đoòng was found in 1991 by a local man named Hồ Khanh, while searching for agarwood, a valuable timber. Although he initially went to investigate further, he was discouraged upon approach by the sound of rushing water and the strong wind issuing from the entrance. Not thinking it to be of any great importance, by the time he returned to his home, he had forgotten the exact location of the entrance. Later, he mentioned his discovery in passing to two members of the British Cave Research Association (BCRA), who were exploring in the local area. They asked him to attempt to rediscover the entrance, which he eventually managed to do in 2008, and in 2009, he led an expedition from the BCRA to the entrance.
