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Adam Spillane is just back

from an experience that's out of this world.

Well, Adam, maybe, I guess, it's under this world.

Would that be more accurate?

Yes, that would be more accurate.

Where were you?

I was in a cave in Vietnam,

currently the largest cave passage in the world.

The cave is Hang Son Doong, which means mountain river cave.

It's in the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in Vietnam,

which is also a World Heritage Site.

This is a huge cave, like four miles long.

Yeah, about four miles long.

But the major thing about it was the passage dimensions,

which are over 600 feet high and over 450 feet wide.

So you didn't need to duck?

Ah, no.

And it has these enormous vaulted ceilings

like a cathedral.

Yes, it does,

but a little bigger than most cathedrals.

What did it feel like being in there?

Did it feel, to you, like you were in a sacred space?

Could I just pass you over to my colleague here,

Helen Brooke, who was the youngest member of the expedition.

It felt really humbling

and you felt just really tiny.

Do you have plans to go back?

Yes. At the moment we're planning to go back in 2011.

It is currently the biggest cave in the world,

which is a big deal for lots of people.

And as a result of that,

there's been an awful lot of tourism

to this part of the world.

If we're gonna ensure the health of our people

and the beauty of our planet,

then development has to be sustainable.

Natural wonders like Ha Long Bay and Son Doong Cave

have to be preserved for our children and our grandchildren.

On the original exploration we did,

I had a torch which had four AA batteries

and it was not very bright.

I could see, well, all the way to my feet

most of the time.

What's with the way your batteries worked back then,

no wonder your lights were dim.

I do remember walking up the river and

at one point I'm finding a snake floating down towards us,

or swimming down towards us.

In the dark?

In the dark, yeah.

Yeah, going through the jungle in the dark is a bad idea.

Yeah.

You always sorta think that these things are gonna be there forever.

This is a very temporary situation.

If you look at what they're doing, you wouldn't be hopeful.

I'm glad I got to see it when I did.

It feels good knowing that we got to see it

in its most natural state, before it changes.

Anybody ready?

Okay then, queue up.

You're gonna need...

No, no, that's no good.

You need the black ones for Chad.

So it's the same as going down the entrance.

Everybody will be in a full body harness.

Now I don't know how high this water's going to be,

or even if you've got to swim,

but we will find out and I'll pass that information back.

The ladder's easy, easy, easy.

Look, it's simple.

But when you're on there,

we've got one of the lads called Tuan,

and he speaks some good English,

and he'll come up with you and he'll pull and push.

Wherever he needs to put his hands.

Okay, all right. As long as you're OK with that.

He's a bit shy about that so I said, "Just do as you need."

Tell him this is life and death.

Anything goes.

- Okay, okay.

That's it, they dress you.

I can't even tie my own shoes.

Oh, God, this is a complex procedure, isn't it?

I'm trusting that this is going to work

and I don't lose my pair of shoes in the mud.

- Is that good?

Is that all we do?

Oh no, don't tie them together. You're a cheeky bugger, you.

Thank you, Mr. Nui. Thank you.

That's it. Fashion.

That's good now?

That will work?

I mean, it's a cliched phrase,

but it took my breath away.

It confounded every expectation of being in a cave.

When I was in that cave,

I saw things...

That I would not believe if I saw pictures of.

It really elicits a sense of wonder in you,

which is the closest feeling that I have had

to a belief in magic,

since I was a child.

You're walking through an underground world.

You go through these caverns

and it doesn't even seem like you're in a cavern.

It's pitch black, all's you got is your headlamps,

and then you see these dolines

where you see a rainforest ahead of you,

or you hear a waterfall beside you,

and it doesn't even seem like you're in a cave.

- I think that's what was so exceptional to us

is that you walk into this giant cave, you look up,

it's the size of a skyscraper,

and you're wondering how everybody hadn't been there before.

And I think part of the reason for that

is that other places in the world you go,

you can sort of start to see similarities.

Like you're in Jordan,

and it actually parts of it, like the Wadi Rum,

look like parts of Zion National Park.

Like there's things that you're like, "Oh, I haven't been here,

but it looks like something I might have seen before.

It looks somewhat familiar."

And Son Doong feels like something that you've never seen before.

Like it's just, it's so unique and spectacular.

And I think the only way that we've described it

is it just doesn't feel like you're on Planet Earth anymore

'cause it doesn't feel like anything else that you've seen.

There was something so alien about it

from, like I said, being underground

and then all of a sudden you wind your way

and there's this massive doline the size of a skyscraper.

And it's jungle.

So it was this play of contrasts

combined with the scale and the mystery

that was unequaled in anything that I've seen before.

When I went through it, there was probably less than 1,000 people,

maybe less than 2,000 people been through it,

which is fewer than gone up Mount Everest.

It's of interest to cavers,

but it's gonna be of interest to everybody

because it's so dramatic and so remarkable, you know?

You can't describe it.

It almost seems like something that was created with CG

'cause it doesn't feel like something

that should be on Planet Earth.

The whole experience is very cinematic.

I mean, thinking in terms of movies now

because that's just what I do for a living.

We try to build these worlds on screen

that makes you wanna go there.

And here I am.

I feel like I've stepped through the screen, I guess,

and I'm in one of these worlds that someone's created.

In Hollywood, everything is about artifice.

So the backdrops, granted are meant to be larger than life

and take you to a place that's unique

or not even of this Earth.

And so to go into a place on this Earth

like the Son Doong Cave,

and it's not a backdrop, it's actually real,

and there's no optical illusion or depth perception

in the painting behind you,

in fact, it's real life.

So if you look at a map of Hang Son Doong,

one of the most obvious features, as a geomorphologist,

or as a geologist at least,

is how straight the cave is.

It doesn't have tributary passages coming in

and joining together.

It doesn't have any mazes.

It's just a straight line, almost due north/south.

And that's because the cave formed along a fault line.

So that fault slipped and it weakened the rock

and it cracked the rock there,

and so that gives a path for water to flow down.

Son Doong's very big

because the limestone is very pure,

so it's very easy to dissolve.

And in this part of Vietnam, we get huge amounts of water.

In order for Son Doong to form,

there must have been a considerable amount of rain falling

over the 4 million years that Son Doong has been there

as a cave.

We've taken water samples

and there's nothing special about the water.

It is the same mineral content

as you'd find in many other caves.

The thing about limestone

is that because it's everywhere,

you get a lot of rain falling or a lot streams and rivers,

but they'll just disappear into small cracks.

But what this area has got, which makes it also unique,

it's got a non-limestone area

which is a big catchment for water.

So all small streams join together, form a river,

and hit the limestone massif.

And that's when you're going to get big caves.

At some time in its life,

Son Doong would've been a lot bigger than what it is now.

And there's only sections of the cave

that show its immense height and width.

I'll give you an example of a sort of scale,

and it's not one of the largest parts.

It's just one that we've measured quite accurately.

It's a relatively small part of Son Doong.

And that's the first camp,

which is on the level playing fields.

This is one nice flat area of sand

where we base our first camp.

And we know it's over 110 meters down to the river there.

So it's 110 meters from the camp down to the river.

And up is around 90 meters to the roof.

It's just over 100 meters wide.

And we know this will comfortably fit a large city block.

Again, which I say, is one of the smaller parts of the cave.

So it gives you some idea of the dimensions.

In certain sections of the cave, such as Doline 1,

it's immensely high.

So from the river to the very top is 449 meters.

So that's the tallest part of the cave.

The sections of the cave that are incredibly wide,

such as in Doline 2, which is 175 meters wide.

And the cliffs there from the top of the hill

that you climb up in Doline 2

are 252 meters to the surface.

The highest part of the dark underground part of the cave

is the Great Wall of Vietnam.

And that is 199.98 meters,

to which, I think it's safe to say, is 200 meters.

It's very difficult to see the roof

in that part of the cave.

Caves are one of the last big wildernesses

left in the world.

And cave exploration is one of the few big adventures

left on this planet.

You never know what you will find.

And it can be kissing frogs and not finding any princes,

or it can be kissing a frog

and then going, "Oh, yeah, this is the one."

And that's it.

It's unpredictable.

And that's exactly what Son Doong was

and exactly what you still get now

with exploring caves for the first time.

I wanted to be an astronaut ever since I was a kid.

And that dream has kind of frittered away

with the stalling of the government space programs.

But right now, to be honest with you, this is where it's at.

This is where true exploration is at on this planet.

You know, you can say, "Oh, it's just a hole on the ground."

Well, I'll tell you what. You go try to get down and see how far you can get.

It takes some very serious people to do it.

There is no place on this planet right now

that is completely unexplored,

except for these places

that we're talking about underground.

And so where is the last terrestrial frontier?

It is that way.

Come on Kay...Mark, just whizz through.

You'd get a lorry through there!

Come on.

I'm not...

I'm not gonna get through here.

Jess...you're gonna have to pull me out.

What?!

To most people, caves are quite negative.

People think they are very small, they're squalid,

very cold, dark, and dank.

And there are some caves, quite rarely, that are like that.

Not in Vietnam, it seems.

Vietnam's incredibly fortunate.

The vast majority of the caves are lovely and warm,

quite bright, beautiful formations throughout,

and obviously a lot larger than anywhere.

So very popular.

It's very rare where you can find the longest, the deepest,

or the biggest in your life.

In the '50s, obviously the Commonwealth and the Brits,

we were still into exploration.

Brits have been really good at exploring things

around the world.

They seem to have that desire

to go a place where nobody have been.

Caves have always been popular when there's a rescue.

A cave's a cave to the press,

and they're only interested in the sensationalism

of people trapped in a dark, confined place

behind a large body of water.

And that's what appeals.

The gory side of caving, rather than the splendor.

We're trying to change the face of caving,

in that I'd like it promoted in a much more positive light

and not just the sensational bit when people get rescued.

I doubt if there's ever going to be another larger cave than Son Doong.

Geologically, it's just the perfect size.

But I hope when people visit Son Doong,

they take with them a lot more than that little tick box

of "I visited the world's biggest cave,"

because it is so unique and special.

It's very, very powerful.

You know, it's very powerful,

that cave and the experience of it.

And I think you will see it being less powerful

if it becomes too easy.

The world is pretty well trampled,

so getting to a place that still has some essence

becomes a mission.

Just to get to the mouth of the cave,

you're two days or a day and a half into it.

And then you're three days from anything,

any support system at all.

In the area, which is the whole karst region,

the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park,

we've covered about 30% of the area.

So 70% is still unexplored.

Without the local people,

very few of these caves would've been found.

In fact, of the 350 caves that we've explored

in Quang Binh alone,

there are less than 10

that we've actually explored by ourselves.

So they led us to 99% of all the caves

that have been discovered here.

And they did all the hard work finding the entrances for us.

And they're still doing it this day.

It was scary to...

I think for me,

it was both scary and inspiring to find a cause.

My whole life I had been looking for something

that could make me feel like when I'm with Save Son Doong.

Like something that make me feel so passionate about.

Something that make me feel like I can die for this.

And Save Son Doong gave me that sense.

I would like to ask you guys

to close your eyes for a little bit

and keep them closed for me, please.

Now, what do you see?

Darkness, emptiness, nothing?

Well, please open your eyes again

and let me tell you about my experience

seeing what could be considered absolute darkness.

And my experience with absolute darkness

happened at this beautiful place, Son Doong cave.

The world's largest underground kingdom.

As a child, I loved reading books.

And some of the first books that sparked the interest

of exploring the world in me was those by Jules Verne.

I loved all of them.

"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,"

"Eighty Days Around the World,"

and "Journey to the Center of the Earth."

Now one interesting thing about Jules Verne's books

is that all of them eventually become true.

Nowadays we have the submarine.

We can easily travel around the globe

in way less than 80 days.

But the only thing that had not become true,

before Son Doong,

was "Journey to the Center of the Earth."

And Son Doong, up 'til now, is the only thing

that can give us the closest sense

to what the book described.

In the book, you have a completely different world

that exists parallel to our world underneath our feet.

And that world has animals and plants

that used to exist on Earth.

But because of the change in the environment,

because of human beings, et cetera,

they now only exist in a different world.

And that world, to me, is Son Doong.

The place that I remember the most

is a place that had never been photographed

because it's too dark.

Do you want to experience total darkness?

Howard asked all of us to turn off our headlamp.

And my immediate reaction was I felt suffocated.

I couldn't breathe.

I was overwhelmed with the darkness.

Putting my hands in front of me, I couldn't see them.

Looking down to my feet,

I couldn't see where I was standing on.

And I thought to myself,

this is probably what I would feel like when I die,

when my soul is still there, but my body's gone.

I imagine we all have tried to envision

how it felt like when we died.

When our conscience still aware of everything,

but our body just doesn't exist anymore.

I was scared at first,

but then, later on, I was more impressed

with the idea that nature is just so massive,

its darkness can swallow us basically anytime.

I remember, it was probably the third day of my trip

and we all just got to our campsite at the time,

and suddenly Howard called me aside.

With teary eyes,

he told me that he regretted discovering Son Doong.

Son Doong was fine on its own.

But now that it's open to public,

people want to exploit it for money.

And as much as he liked to keep the place safe

by only bringing in the most respectful people,

trekking in small groups,

and capped it at a few 100 a year,

there's now a construction conglomerate

that was trying to build a cable car

which is going to bring in 1,000 people per hour.

Going from a few 100 a year to 1,000 an hour,

that would kill Son Doong.

Vietnam has a very patchy record

of environmental protection.

Yes, there are established national parks.

Yes, there are laws and there are environmental groups

that are doing their best,

but when it comes to the real competition

between economic interests and the environment,

by and large, the economic interests win.

And you've seen some very special places

that have been ruined, really, by overdevelopment.

Ha Long Bay is the classic example.

It's picture-postcard beautiful,

or at least it should be,

but the degree of development

and the lack of concern for the consequences of development

have been shocking in terms of pollution and destruction

of the visual environment.

Another example would be the island of Phu Quoc

at the other end of the country, right down in the south.

Once a prison island, remote, unspoiled.

Now it's turning into the Torremolinos of Vietnam, really.

It's a massive development.

Far too intensive for the amount of space there is.

Unable to process the amount of sewage and waste

and all the rest of it.

It's just becoming a nightmare, really.

Vietnam's economic growth has been pretty rapid

by any standards.

I mean, it only looks weak

when you compare it, say, to China, for example.

I think that the pressures to develop

are getting ever stronger.

A lot of this growth is being driven by big conglomerates

and companies like Vingroup or Sun Group,

which ostensibly are private sector

but with a lot of state connection and so forth.

And we're seeing these big name groups

driving a lot of the real estate developments.

And in some places, the power of these groups

rivals that of the Communist Party.

They have money, they have connections.

They can bring jobs and influence

into sometimes relatively poor provinces,

and it's very hard for those officials,

even if they wish to, to resist the pressure.

The big corporation in Vietnam are very powerful.

In my writing, I touch a number of themes,

and mostly they resonate pretty well

and they are well-received by the public.

But the themes which receive the most pushback,

sometimes very hostile,

relates to consumerism, tourism, sustainable development,

and things like that.

Especially when I talk about Son Doong Cave

or the overdevelopment of tourism in other places,

and there will be a very strong fraction,

very large fraction,

of people pushing back and saying we need development

and this is a good thing for the country.

And you can apply that to a lot of social phenomena,

social problems we see in Vietnam

in other part of the world, right?

The drive for profit

without any consideration of the social cost

and environmental cost. The lack of transparency,

the lack of freedom of expression right now,

the corruption, you know.

So here is the clash of the two different attitudes

and understanding of how society should go forwards.

It's very difficult to talk openly

inside the country about the systematic problems

with environmental protection.

You can talk about habitat loss,

you can talk about preserving species,

and you can talk about trying to stop wildlife trading

and endangered species being trafficked.

But to actually say that big economic interests

are conspiring with local political interests

to destroy the environment,

that is very, very difficult

because you're trampling on so many people's toes.

You're trampling on the interest of the business,

the reputation of the officials,

and the legitimacy of the Communist Party,

and that really starts to get you into trouble.

There were reports from as early as 2012

that the government was exploring the possibility

of building a cable car into Son Doong.

Obviously, these discussions took place behind closed doors.

But a UNESCO report from around that time

warned about this and the damage it would cause.

Then in October 2014,

plans for the cable car were officially unveiled.

The head of Quang Binh Province

announced at a press conference that they had contracted

a large real estate developer to begin surveying.

Vietnam has a track record for building cable cars

in places of natural beauty.

There is a walkway in Da Nang and another in Da Lat,

but this is the first project

which met with any kind of significant opposition.

A petition opposing the cable car construction was set up,

which got over 50,000 signatures in less than a week.

In response to this, a second press conference was called,

which was essentially an exercise in damage limitation.

And after this, things went dark.

The Vietnamese people are usually the last to know

what the government is planning.

And it was clear that, despite opposition to the project,

plans were still being drawn behind closed doors.

So in November 2014, I co-founded Save Son Doong.

At the beginning, none of us knew what to do.

None of us had run a social campaign before.

So we try different things.

Our main goal back then, but also until now,

was to raise awareness.

If I try to make impact, I cannot do it by myself.

I need people, and social media allows us to do that.

I don't remember exactly who came up with the idea

of asking people to hold a Save Son Doong sign

and take a picture and send to us.

But it was one of the very first,

and probably still until now,

one of the most successful initiatives that we did.

The idea is very simple.

Most people stand somewhere in natural beauty

and you hold up a sign that says Save Son Doong

and you take a picture.

I expected to receive a lot of photos,

but I thought it would be mainly from Vietnam.

I really did not expect that I would get so many photos

from foreigners around the world.

One of the very first photos we received

was from a group of students.

And you could see they're standing in a class

and they had a rope around their neck

that looks like a cable car.

That sent a very strong message, obviously.

We got some photos from places far away

that I didn't expect that we could get photos from, like Israel.

Most importantly, besides the photo itself,

the messages that people include also hit home very hard.

They talked about how Son Doong is a place so far away

that they may never, ever in their life

get to see by their own eyes,

but it resonates with things that happen

in their own countries.

Receiving thousand and thousand of photos

from people from around the world

definitely made me feel overwhelmed at first.

But, more importantly,

it reconfirmed to me that what I'm doing is not crazy,

and perhaps at the end of the day,

it's the right thing to do.

As we were filming,

one of my friends holding up the Save Son Doong sign

on the other side of the street earlier,

somebody passed by and stopped

and claimed to be an undercover cop

and asking my friend, what was she doing?

And as she was explaining

that this is for environmental protection,

he said that if she continues to stand in public

with her Save Son Doong sign, she would be arrested.

She would be brought to the police station.

This is indicative of how activism in Vietnam

can be oppressed.

Even the smaller sign,

of holding a sign of something completely peaceful,

like Save Son Doong, that does not disturb anybody,

can be considered a crime.

Protest in general in Vietnam is not welcome.

The Party is paranoid that a demonstration,

even about pollution of the sea,

could snowball into something else

that other grievances could be linked to it.

That the fact that there are simply large numbers

of people on the streets

could encourage other people to come onto the streets

and we'd end up with some kind of

what they would call a color revolution,

based on the idea of things that happened in Eastern Europe

a few years ago.

I have made a terrible discovery.

There are traitors among us.

The Communist Party's number one rule

is that the Communist Party should rule Vietnam,

and that anything which threatens a Communist Party rule

needs to be squashed.

And that could be when corruption gets to the point

that it gets out of control.

It could be dissident religious movement.

It could be a local environmental campaign.

If it starts to actually undermine

the principles of Communist Party rule,

it's a threat.

There's a fear that if the Communist Party

just starts to give a little bit,

then it'll start to unravel.

That's certainly the view of a part of the system,

but it's the part of the system

that controls the levers of the security services.

And if you start to say that the problems that we are facing

or the problems which exist somewhere

are because of Communist Party rule,

then you become a dissident.

To be a dissident in Vietnam,

you are putting yourself beyond the limit

of what's acceptable to the Communist Party

and you get into trouble.

And you can get into serious trouble.

What the party will do is not necessarily arrest everybody

who goes to a demonstration,

but they will try to work out who are the key leaders

and they will try to work out who might be having contact

with groups based overseas or just groups internally,

and they will try and pick on those people

and then hope that the others will just sort of calm down.

But you also have a system of surveillance

which comes right down to the neighborhood level,

where the authorities can intervene against individuals.

You will be invited to the police station.

You will have long working sessions with the secret police.

Your businesses may be targeted.

Your friends may be told all kinds of rumors about you.

You might find that your property is damaged,

or you have people watching your house.

And at the very worst extreme,

you might actually find yourself beaten up.

And then if you still don't get the message,

then you might be taken to court and jailed.

So the stakes are pretty high?

- Yeah, I mean, to be a real dissident in Vietnam

takes a real degree of dedication.

And I think that's why

the dissidents that you find in Vietnam

tend to be quite difficult people.

They're the people who won't just

do the sensible thing and calm down and be quiet.

They're people who are really fired up about things.

A lot of governmental officers in Vietnam

compare Son Doong to a sleeping beauty hidden in the jungle,

and now is the time for the prince to come and wake her up.

Well, I had always had a very different view

on that "Sleeping Beauty" story.

Like if I were the princess, I would be very pissed

if somebody come and wake me up in the middle of my dream.

If I'm sleeping, I deserve the right to sleep.

So if Son Doong is being so peaceful,

who are we to decide that it is now time

for us to come and change this place

and, quote, unquote, develop this place?

The ultimate purpose of Save Son Doong

is not to challenge the government.

We made it very clear within our team from the beginning

that this is an environmental campaign.

We don't wanna turn it into a political campaign.

And even though a lot of people try to politicize our cause,

we make it very clear

that we believe the government of Vietnam

as well as Vietnamese people can make the best choice,

can make the most informed decisions

when they have the information.

So our purpose is trying our best to provide the evidence,

the scientific proof to the government

so that they can make the best decisions for Vietnam.

The cable car development plan was an open secret.

Anybody who's involved in it denied it,

but we obtained clear evidence that it was going on.

On April 24th 2017,

the head of the second development company

who had been contracted by Quang Binh Province

to build a cable car,

announced at the company's shareholders meeting

that they had decided to take on the project

and had requested Quang Binh

to complete all the required paperwork.

It was also announced that the cable car

needed to approach directly into Son Doong

in order for this project to be successful.

This was reported in the national news

and we posted about this on our Facebook page,

including taking screenshots of one of the articles

which reported on this meeting.

Later on, we found out that this article had been edited

and the direct quotes attributed to the head of the company

had been altered to remove the statement

that they had decided to take on the project

and that now the cable car would no longer approach

directly into Son Doong,

but instead would end a few kilometers away

from the cave entrance.

We had some early success with protecting Son Doong.

The success will be never enduring

because we know that the interest of the big business

is still there.

It's really a big potential for them.

So it's very hard for them to forgo that

and say, "Hey, look, we go somewhere else."

They will come back again and again and again,

and try to convince the leadership

and convince the public that the cable car is something good

for the province and for the country to do.

Of course, I appreciate that the people in Phong Nha

have the right to a better livelihood,

but I don't think that mass tourism and big scale project

and the cable car will do any good for them

in the long term.

I think they can have a much better,

much more sustainable, small scale,

much more community-based tourism.

And it will be of best benefits for them,

for the environment, for

Let's have a chat before we get started, shall we?

You've all got helmets?

You've all got helmets? - Yep.

- Everybody's happy with the helmet.

That's great.

Back in 2014, when I got there,

the town was just in its infancy and just starting to grow.

There wasn't much going on.

There was a lot of speculation

about how things were gonna grow

because the discovery of Son Doong.

Quang Binh Province has changed dramatically

in the last few years.

In 1990, we came down to Phong Nha

after five days traveling from Hanoi.

It was a hell of a journey, a really rough journey.

There were no sealed roads from Hanoi to here.

None at all.

It took a day to get here from Dong Hoi,

which now you can do in 40 minutes.

And it was quite a shock to see this place

because basically, there was nothing here.

The people were incredibly poor.

Incredibly friendly people.

They all came and see us.

Amazingly friendly, but amazingly poor.

Quang Binh Province, without any doubt,

was the poorest province in Vietnam.

Most of the people lived on the river

and they were fishing people.

They grew a little bit of rice,

but that was their only source of food, really.

We didn't really understand the poverty

that they were going under at that time.

Very naive when we first came out here.

We wondered why we were bringing all our own food

from Hanoi.

We didn't understand they didn't have any food.

The weeks that we arrived and we worked here,

there were about 1,000 people died

of malnutrition and malaria.

There were lots and lots of bomb craters

because this was completely destroyed.

And I mean completely destroyed in the war.

There was no standing building.

Not one building was left after the war.

So when we first came in 1990, it was flat.

The odd building were just starting to be constructed

in towns like Vinh,

but it was just bomb creators and a mess.

This was many, many years after the war.

There's been no development.

This was the area where the Ho Chi Minh Trail,

the narrowest part of Vietnam.

So it's the most bombed area in the world.

So more bombs were dropped here

than anywhere else ever in the world,

and so it just got murdered.

In fact, all this area was on fire for most of the war.

They had five major excursions

to the Americans a day, I've been told,

from the aircraft carriers out in the sea and from Thailand.

They came here, dropped bombs five times a day.

So the whole area used to be called the fire mountains

because they were always on fire.

Everything was burning all the time.

Everything's new, yeah?

It's just boom, and then everyone just like overwhelmed.

It's like Vietnam in the past, after the war.

Basically, we've been through a very like rough time

and then we have to start developing.

But we don't have a lot of good direction, yeah?

So we need to go that, go that, go that,

and then we find, let's see which way is good.

It reminded me of Kathmandu in the '70s

when it was very innocent.

People were flowing in there

and walking out into the mountains,

except these were people that were subsistence living.

They don't even have firewood half the time.

And here comes a bunch of Westerners

walking through their village

and they didn't know, they put people up.

They didn't know how to charge

or how much money to take or not take.

There was all these traditions

about taking care of their travelers.

And all of this was colliding, but it was very innocent.

And all of that's going on in Phong Nha,

so it makes a really good correlation.

Kathmandu was beautiful, it was simple, it was small.

And people started opening little shops

that would serve apple pie to Americans,

and they had sort of Westernized food

and you could stay for 60 cents a night.

It was very simple, but it beautiful and fabulous.

They started realizing

that all these kids that were flowing in had lots of money,

even though they looked poor.

They would pay you $4 for a piece of apple pie,

which they were stunned.

One rupee would buy you a meal,

and people were paying 10 times to what it would cost.

And so the culture started to go, "Okay, well,

if you guys want to come in here and spend money,

then we're gonna set up traps for that."

And then it just gets commercialized.

And Phong Nha is on its way to that, but it's not there yet.

And that, for me, was so exciting

because I don't find anywhere like that.

You can find places that are innocent,

but they're very expensive and complicated to get to.

And Phong Nha is not.

You can land in Cam Ranh or whatever and drive up there.

You don't even have to rent a car.

You can take a car, it'll cost you 30 bucks.

So that means it's accessible and it's still innocent.

That's pretty rare.

I don't see that much anymore.

So then it was the Maldives, and now they're trampled,

so now it's some Marshall Islands,

but they're always trying to figure out

how to stay a few steps ahead.

Well, right now, Phong Nha is a few steps ahead.

There's a whole bunch of positive stuff

that happened to start with.

We'd just had the great big 2010 flood.

So I got here and all of this was covered in a foot of mud.

The people had a despondent look.

The Westerners turning up has changed things dramatically.

Phong Nha has exploded with tourism.

Everyone is aspirational

and they all think they're going to the top.

So everyone on a bicycle wants to be on a motorbike,

everyone on a motorbike wants to be in a car,

and everyone in a car wants to be in a helicopter.

So off we go to the future.

As everybody's noticing now,

there's massive changes in Phong Nha.

It's mainly local development.

It's not been big business from outside coming in.

Most of the buildings that have been constructed

in the last two or three years are fairly small

and they've not had the money to build

very high skyscraper accommodation.

It's all low level.

So things are developing.

The downside of any development is what happens to the town.

I think the decision now, as you said, is very important.

For example, the plan of Phong Nha in the next 50 years.

For example, the building construction.

That will make Phong Nha look beautiful or shit.

If the local people understood that,

Phong Nha will keep its value.

It's developed, but in a beautiful way.

What is fitting to Phong Nha.

Keep it original, keep it something very Phong Nha,

very unique in Vietnam.

If we create that value, in the next 10 years,

Phong Nha gonna becoming paradise to people.

The ideas of this place,

it's trying to build an eco-friendly villa or resort.

So as you see here,

we use the material which is very unique in Quang Binh.

We use a bamboo cross, bamboo bar.

It's all eco-friendly.

So we try to get a little bit of this, a little bit that,

and make this unique.

Phong Nha used to be a lot of backpackers,

but now it's getting like a middle class.

And if you could create different value and it's good,

I think it will be successful.

And you see Phong Nha now, it's so original.

And a few places like this doesn't affect all the landscape.

It's next to the mountain.

You can hear all the sound of the birds,

maybe the monkeys jumping out.

I'm very confident.

It will take some time,

but it will be the future of Phong Nha.

Phong Nha area, there's more people visit caves here,

both as an adventure tourism,

than anywhere else in the world.

More people are doing adventure tours in caves

here than anywhere else comfortably.

These are not tourist caves with lights and paths.

These are proper multi-day adventures.

If we develop it properly, naturally,

it will attract a lot of people

who really want to see the natural beauty.

It seems to be working.

The idea of setting up these adventure tours

to only limited people,

preserve the cave, and yet promote the cave.

That's what's been a very successful model,

and it's growing incredibly well.

You've only got to walk the streets of Phong Nha,

which is full of foreign tourists at the moment.

It's really, really busy.

We have just arrived in the small town of Phong Nha.

It's kind of a cute little town, huh?

- It really is.

Hi, my name's JP.

I'm in Phong Nha, Vietnam, and I'm traveling the world.

It is absolutely beautiful.

The people, the hats.

- I love this place. - I love everyone that's here.

I love what they've got here.

We're very proud

that everything has been locally owned.

That's been a huge deal for Phong Nha.

The local people saw opportunity,

they joined forces as families,

and they started all of these new endeavors.

And I always thought that's one of the biggest things

that made Phong Nha so unique and so special.

I mean like, where am I?

This is like paradise.

Man, it's gorgeous.

Hello.

You're so falling off.

Things were going so well.

Phong Nha was booming.

It was busy.

It was full of energy and people and anticipation

and hope and big dreams.

Everyone had big dreams.

In Phong Nha town,

I think at least 90% business, they close.

They have no choice.

So now we block the border.

So no more tourists, no customers.

So they have to close and find other solution, other jobs.

It's a really difficult time.

This is really tough for the locals.

A lot of business owners, they're very scared.

Phong Nha people rely on tourism.

And when the tourism is dead,

it's obviously they just...yeah, `very stressful.

A lot of business, they borrow money from the bank

and now COVID came for three times.

So bankrupt.

Some of them, they sell their business.

Some they going to sell quite cheaper.

They have no choice now.

Too much money from the bank.

A lot of us Westerners here

are looking over our shoulder

at where Phong Nha used to be and we're going, "Well,

we can't wait 'til the good times return."

I don't know that we really can be looking for stuff

to go back to the way it was.

If you can just turn around and look at the future

and where we're going.

I think what'll come back is different development.

In the middle of 2020,

when people started to talk about the new normal,

the new normal.

It would be very sad

if the new normal is where they continue

or even more so prioritize economic benefits

over environmental impacts.

So ...to me, a good new normal

is actually what Phong Nha has already been doing

in the last five, six years

that other provinces in Vietnam are not doing.

And I hope that the people in charge in Quang Binh

can see that and can stick to that.

I did and I still do sometimes have

that very strong sense of guilt

that inspired me to start Save Son Doong in the beginning.

Sometime came back,

haunting me as a question of what am I doing

to the poor people that could very much benefit

from mass tourism.

Because it is impossible for me to ask people to starve

while they know that they're sitting on a hidden treasure.

It's unfair for people.

It's easy for me to say,

because I grew up in a privileged background.

I don't have to worry about my next meal every day.

But for those people who do,

I cannot ask them to go sit and wait

for the benefits of 10 years, a hundred years from now.

We're building a homestay

and my wife's putting steel inside the concrete columns.

And I'm like, "What's this for?"

She said, "Oh, this is to make the building last forever."

I said, "But our daughter's gonna have to

knock this down soon."

And she went, "What for?"

I said, "Maybe a shopping center, maybe a heliport,

maybe a cable car."

And my wife said, "Oh, don't be silly, that won't happen."

And I said, "You're standing here looking at villas

and a swimming pool in your banana field."

I said, "When you were a kid,

did you think this would be here?"

She went, "Oh yeah, I can see what you mean."

People say to me, "Hey, Multi,

you were here when tourism started.

You should take credit for this."

I don't want to take credit for tourism

because if I have to take the credit,

then I have to take the blame

for any bad stuff that happens.

Phong Nha, in 10 years, there'll be a Muong Thanh restaurant,

there'll be a casino, there'll be golf courses.

The whole place will be great and prosperous.

And in the big picture, that's a good thing.

There's always gonna be the money there.

But what I'm worried about is the locals

that are gonna suffer from it.

These people aren't gonna benefit.

These people are gonna sell their properties

for twice what they're worth.

And then in three years,

when their properties are worth 30 times as much,

they're not gonna be that happy.

As the economy change and grows,

land has become the most valuable commodity.

Everybody wants to have it.

So Vietnam people don't own land.

The land is not the people's property.

The land belongs to the government

and given to the people to use,

to build a house, to farm, to grow rice,

or to build a factory.

But at any time, the government could take it back.

If they say roads need to be built

or a project need to be invested,

then they will take away from the people

with a certain compensation which almost will never be fair

and never match the market price.

Land rights is not only a hot topic in Vietnam,

but a sensitive issue,

that talking about it can give people trouble.

It is a sensitive topic

because there have been cases in the past

where certain villagers stood up to governmental officers

when their land being confiscated

and they were sent to jail.

Some even received death sentences.

A lot of these farmers and fishermen,

when you ask them about land rights,

they wouldn't be able to distinguish

that the certificate that they're holding in their hand

only allow them to use the land for 50 years

and not to own the land.

It's just very simple to them

that they were born on this land

so they want their son to be born on this land.

That's how simple they see it.

So when somebody knock now on their door

and said, "You have to leave

because we using this for other purposes,"

it just doesn't make sense to them.

And that's where corruption will come into play.

Because when you have the power

to reassign the purpose of the land,

then you will potentially have the power

to...to...earn the rent.

To receive the profit out of that.

So let's say I'm a big developer.

I see a valuable location, rice fields,

and I'm a crony of my politician in that province.

We could link together

and say that we need that land for our project

which is good for the province,

and take away the land from the current land users

with the minimal compensation

and enjoy the profit out of that.

When the big companies decided to invest

into local community,

the reason why the local officials always welcome

is because they see the potential

for their people to be richer.

As a tourist, we love to enjoy nature.

But looking from the local people point of view.

If there's no industry for them to make money,

to earn a living and for them to get richer,

for their children to go to school,

then it's not fair for them.

So tourism's sometime is a sacrifice.

Bringing a cable car into the national park

is not a bad idea if you know how to control that.

A lot of people, they cannot walk into the national park,

or they cannot go hiking,

but they still can see the national park from the sky.

Sooner or later, it's gonna happen.

It's a good chance for the local people.

And it's a good chance for Quang Binh and Phong Nha

to show the world that we have everything.

We have the largest cave, we have a big cave system here,

and even have cable car.

So we have different options for people to come.

Humankind, as soon as they discover something

on the Earth that's unique and wonderful,

they will desecrate it.

We have a terrible track record

of acknowledging, respecting, and preserving.

It's one thing to watch the Imperial sites of China get trampled,

but it's another thing altogether to watch a natural wonder

that took millions and millions of years to develop.

And part of that is you have to have exclusivity

to have sanctuary.

The cave needs to be a sanctuary.

But then that means you got to limit.

And the way things get limited is by cost.

The whole idea that I'm pushing for

is Son Doong is not a place for mass tourism.

So it is a place for a limited number of people to go to.

Now who gets to go is the next question.

And right now,

one of the biggest filter is financial ability.

Who can pay $3,000 for a four day trip?

Given that the average income of a Vietnamese citizen

is about $6,500 a year, $3,000 is a lot.

If you're looking at it from an environmental perspective,

yeah, okay, save Son Doong.

Yes, put a cage over the front of it, don't walk in there.

Save Son Doong.

Limiting the people that go in there to the rich and famous?

No, that's not saving Son Doong.

That's saving Son Doong for those that can afford it.

Not everybody going there

was to go to Son Doong.

Thanks to Son Doong, other caves in this area got a lot more popularity,

which I don't think they would be able to do

without the story of Son Doong.

Yes, people can get rich overnight really fast,

but that's not gonna last.

And we've seen this over and over and over in Vietnam.

And I don't want the same thing to repeat with Phong Nha.

Phong Nha is a small village.

All these villagers are literally brothers and cousins

and uncles and aunties and sisters to each other.

If you're talking to the poorest people,

it makes sense why they would be excited for this project

in which big companies are promising them

lots and lots of money, lots and lots of tourists.

But for those who are luckier

and have access to higher education,

they understand that when big companies come,

majority of the profit would go to the pocket

of these big companies

and they, in turn, will just become

construction workers, et cetera.

But if we support small local businesses,

then we can actually create permanent employment.

Local businesses founded and run by local people

would be the best tool to empower people

because these local companies

have the best interest of the community at heart.

Oxalis is...

The guy that owns it is an interesting character.

He didn't really get into Oxalis and the cave and all that

because he wanted to make money.

He'd already made money.

And now they're throwing off revenue and profits

and they're using those profits to support schools.

That's fabulous.

That's very important.

Now you have a full cycle.

The commerciality is returning to the community

instead of going to China.

That's very important.

If they could keep that loop going throughout Phong Nha.

If that concept could sustain that area, which it won't,

but if it could,

they'd have a chance at really creating something

that, on the human level, is remarkable,

as well as associating it with a remarkable natural wonder.

You say it won't, but why don't you think that's sustainable?

Because there's too much at stake.

And there'll be people and big players that'll step in.

Just imagine if the Grand Canyon

was just discovered this week

and it didn't belong to anyone.

And there was a government that controlled it,

but they were under the influence of a lot of forces.

And then people realized

that this is gonna become, you know,

it's gonna become a major global tourist attraction.

How would that go?

It wouldn't go well.

So I don't have much hope

that they're suddenly gonna wake up

and figure out how to develop Phong Nha

in a way that preserves the charm.

It'll just get trampled for money.

And that's just the way it is.

This is the new cave entrance.

A phenomenal draft.

And it's probably hard to make out,

but there's like a cloud layer coming up out of cave.

Incredible.

Look at them leaves moving.

Probably bigger than Deer Cave, this one.

So its claim as being the largest underground passage,

is probably gonna have to change.

When you march through it,

you realize you're in a big enclosed space.

It's quite remarkable

that no one knew about Son Doong until about 10 years ago.

When you told people

that you were going to this big cave in Vietnam,

how many of your friends knew about it?

None.

- Absolutely none. - Yeah.

I have to admit that

95% of the people I told about this cave

had never heard of it and were like,

"Why would you wanna go spend a week in a cave?

Isn't it dark and you don't see any light?

And where do you sleep?

And, ugh, no, not for me."

The only way that I even knew about this

was a friend of mine posted a story about it

that was posted on Facebook.

And I was gearing up

for this seven-month trip around the world

and I clicked on it and read the story.

And I said, "I want to go there,

and I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure I go there."

I mean, that's the only way I'd heard about it.

And even after taking the trek and telling people,

people were like, "Where, what?

Vietnam?

Are you sure?"

The way the expedition was organized,

that particular one is that we split into three teams

and each team would have a set of objectives.

And we'd set off on Monday morning,

get back on Friday afternoon,

and then we'd have the weekend

sort of admin, relaxing, having a few beers,

talking to each other about what we'd done,

and then planning for the next week.

Our team, which comprised of Snablet

as the sort of team leader,

and myself, Adam, Hellie, and Trevor.

We were given this set of objectives.

And we were sat by the campfire that night

and we were sort of laughing and joking.

And Snablet said, "Well, we're obviously the C team

because Howard obviously is leading the A team

and Debs is obviously leading the B team.

So that means we must be the C team."

And, yeah, we were all quite happy with that.

And it was just a bit of a joke and nothing very serious.

And then, the next day, we found Hang Son Doong.

It was just really quite incredible.

It's very unassuming.

It's just a pile of rocks with a hole in it.

Any normal person

would never be able to find Son Doong.

It's literally in the middle of a huge canopy of mountains.

From a bird's eye view, you would never, ever be able to see that.

So it's remarkable that it was even discovered.

He was on his own and it was in a storm

and he sought shelter underneath a convenient cliff,

which is the entrance of what we now call Son Doong Cave.

And then he forgot about it

because it wasn't of any particular use to him.

And then in 2005,

he was introduced to the British caving expedition.

And he said, "Yep, I used to go in the jungle a lot.

I know lots of caves."

And he agreed to take a digital camera

and we paid him a bit of money,

and over the next few years he sought out caves again,

finding Son Doong in 2008 and taking us there in 2009.

Our initial thoughts were

it was quite obviously a reasonably significant cave.

You can hear the river flowing inside from the entrance,

and there's quite a substantial breeze

coming out of the cave.

A substantial breeze normally, would signify

a substantial cave.

If there aren't any ropes down the entrance,

it's a very committing climb.

It's certainly very committing on some days.

The entrance can get very, very slippery.

We didn't see any footprints at all,

but in the first part of the cave,

it floods catastrophically in the wet seasons.

It's possible we weren't the first people in there,

but it's very unlikely that anybody had been in.

Vietnamese only tend to be interested in caves

for collecting water, fishing, and shelter.

I was lying in bed that night,

and I do remember this very clearly,

and I was thinking, "What have we found?"

'Cause I'd been to the caves in Mulu.

I'd only done a very short trip there, a family trip,

as a tourist rather than as an explorer.

But I'd been into Deer Cave, and...it was bigger.

And I was convinced that this was either bigger,

or as big, or very nearly as big as Deer Cave.

And obviously, we couldn't say anything definitive

'cause we hadn't done anywhere near enough work.

And I'd also been to the Chiquibul Cave in Belize,

which at the time was the second biggest cave in the world,

and this was clearly much bigger than that.

Much bigger.

So I knew we'd found something very, very special.

I'd never been to Asia caving before.

And I was just like, "Wow, all caves must be like this."

Like, yeah, I was 22 years old, just,

and I was like, "This is amazing."

I'm probably less impressed than Adam and Trevor

and lots of other people who'd done lots of discovery,

'cause I was like, "Oh, maybe this is just what it's like."

Whereas, they were just like...

And I was like, "Well, yeah, it's pretty cool."

And actually now, I kind of look back at that

and I think that was so incredibly special.

And I was so spoiled in that moment,

in that first experience.

If someone told me,

this will be the greatest discovery of your lifetime,

at 22, you'll never be able to top it from here,

it would seem unlikely to be able to.

I would have probably gone more.

There is still a lot of worthwhile research

to be done in Son Doong.

Things do evolve in caves that you don't see

in other parts of the world.

Things can stay alive in caves

perhaps that are extinct in other places.

And certainly in parts of Son Doong,

there are animals as unique in the world.

As a geologist,

we look at the world sometimes a little bit differently

and we're dealing all the time with deep time.

We think about the age of the Earth,

the age of this Solar System, the age of the universe,

the history of life.

These caves are time capsules of the past.

They're this tremendous archive of information.

And if you figure out how to read them,

you're able to learn incredible detail

about what happened millions of years ago.

This is an area

that hasn't been studied, to my knowledge, extensively,

and so there may be new discoveries for science.

I don't think anyone wants to see

the trash on Everest in other places.

We should learn from what's happened in the past.

They have expeditions to Everest now to pick up rubbish,

and bits and pieces that the expeditions have scattered and left.

It's effectively a tip, the world's tallest mountain.

And I wouldn't want that for Son Doong.

It's very probable that at some point,

the Vietnamese tourist industry

and the Vietnamese government

will put pressure on enabling

much more universal access to the cave.

And I have to say, I have two minds about this.

First of all, as a conservationist, it will be a disaster.

But on the other hand,

do we as foreign conservationists have the right to say

that the Vietnamese people

are not allowed to go and see this great cave

in their country.

So I'm hoping that they hold off.

But...it's gonna be such a temptation for them.

Sometimes I got this really weird conflict

within myself after I discover a beautiful place.

Should I tell people about it?

Should I not tell people about it?

It may sound conflicting,

but as an educator myself, I don't believe in the idea

of hiding information from people.

People should know about beautiful places in their country.

People should feel proud.

And hopefully that pride will be what motivates them

to protect those places.

I actually dislike the fact

that Son Doong is always advertised

as the world's largest cave.

Yes, it is true.

It is the world's largest cave,

and that title probably what attracts

a lot of people to this place.

But I think Son Doong deserves

so much more recognition than that.

Me, myself, I went to Son Doong

because of the fact that it was so isolated

from the outside world

and its pristine charm has been preserved

through millions of years.

Son Doong is beautiful because of its ecosystem.

Inside this cave,

there are two jungles, two rivers, one waterfall.

There is even fog inside the cave

that makes you sometimes forget that you're underground.

Now imagine the same cave,

but without the living ecosystem inside Son Doong.

Would it be beautiful

or just gonna be the worst largest hole?

An empty chamber with no habitats, nothing. It's dead.

It's gonna be very boring

if you're just gonna walk through a hole

for like 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 days.

So Son Doong deserves some time for us to study and admire

before we let human beings in and destroy everything.

People are a lot more conscious now of what can happen.

And these vulnerable indigenous cultures

are also sensitive to their impact.

So there's a lot more experience in the world

of how a little village like Phong Nha could be impacted

because of the value of the cave.

I would say Phong Nha will become a lot more accessible.

There'll be...

Well, it depends.

It's hard to know.

It's inevitable, it's coming.

There will be a cable car at some point.

We can talk about how we don't want it as much as we want,

but it is going to happen.

So it'd be nice if the right people are on the committees.

That's all we can pray for,

is that those types of people are in place

and direct the growth that we have.

And it's not just about the money.

It's about responsible tourism.

So it's inevitable, but I can still care about 'em.

So, yeah, the care's still there.

But, yeah, you're right.

It's inevitable.

But being here on the ground...

Yeah, so for me, being here and seeing it happen.

Sometimes in history you've been able to deflect it.

So, yeah, I suppose it would've been nice

to be able to deflect it.

If we put human beings as the center of it all,

then I think of the feeling that I had.

The overwhelming feeling that I had

when I went to Son Doong.

I want my children to feel the same.

The pride I felt when they discovered this place.

I want my children to be proud, too,

when they talk about their home country.

I love this country very much.

And to think that my children would grow up

not being able to enjoy what I'm enjoying right now,

just like how whenever I hear stories from my grandmother

about how beautiful Ho Chi Minh used to be compared to now.

Yeah, I don't want history to repeat itself.

I know that it's a lot of bad things still going on.

There's a lot of awful things.

A lot of drama in the background.

A lot of games, a lot of fighting, whatever shit.

But the point is, at the end of the day,

There's still a lot of positive thing with that.

The good cake as always,

will attract a lot of greedy people.

But if they work singularly, individually,

I don't think it will not be welcomed by the community.

Everything has two faces.

One is the good, one is the bad.

So with all the bad thing happening,

I'm pretty confident if people know how to work together,

Phong Nha, I think, will be good.

But it needs some time, for us to learn.

Thank you, everybody, for coming today.

We want to protect our environment, yes?

Yes.

- Okay, today we pick up rubbish, yes?

Well, the good sign is that, a few years ago,

the national government announced that.

But we are very cautious.

There's no...there's nothing who held them accountable

for that statement.

Governments come and go, so now we got a new government.

And they all can have a different thought on that, right?

They can turn around

and say, "Hey, look, well, things change.

Now we need to rethink our priority

and this is what we should do now."

So that number, 10 years, is just a symbolic number.

It says that they are not ready to do that right now,

but it doesn't mean

that they will not try it again in future.

We're keeping our finger crossed

that the side that's leaning towards conservation is winning.

But then again, they always say "as of right now."

Even though UNESCO did ask them to cancel

all cable car plans to Son Doong permanently,

they have never said "permanently."

They always give a timeline, "oh, until 2030,"

or "as of right now."

So, I still believe that this is an ongoing campaign for us.