Apart from the thousands of limestone karsts and small isles dotting the whole of Halong Bay, there were small islands that also provided additional attractions like the Dau Go Cave (Wooden Stakes Cave). According to a local story, while planning a counterattack against their Mongolian enemies in 1288, the men of General Tran Hung Dao hid an enormous number of wooden stakes inside that cave. The wooden stakes were then streamed into the Bach Dang River to serve as obstacles against the attacking Mongols. It was a risky plan that tricked the enemy, as the men of Kublai Khan got entangled with the wooden stakes while crossing through the treacherous riverbed, drowning a number of Mongolian warriors.
Halong Bay Side Step to Dau Go Cave
Scaling the Limestone Heights
Dau Go was a limestone islet eight kilometers south of Bai Chay. The mouth of the cave was located more than 180 meters above sea level; visitors aboard the iconic Halong Bay junk boats could view it from afar. At first, I was not really keen on that side trip, as I just wanted to lounge around the rooftop of our boat and enjoy the cold winds and amazing scenery around Halong Bay. But since I was a history junkie, listening to our guide, Mr. Nguyen, narrate the interesting history of the cave got me a bit excited.
Inside the cave were a series of man-made structures like concrete stairs, hand railings, a lighting system, and even a centralized air-conditioning system. It did not feel like being in a cave, I told myself. A flight of a hundred steps greeted visitors leading to the entrance. As we went deeper into the cave, we passed by different chambers with spectacular stalactite and stalagmite formations, each one coming to its own unique shape as sculptured by thousands of years of the karst process. Similar to previous caves I had been to, many of the formations could easily be imagined to resemble some human and animal figures.
The Chambers of Marvels
Referred to in the late nineteenth century as Grotte des Merveilles (a site of many marvels), Dau Go Cave had three chambers where spots of sunlight emanating from holes in the ceiling provided a stellar composition of lighting. Combining it with the man-made colored illumination, the vibe resembled a club scene without the blasting DJ music.
The visitor's trail took one to an encircled path leading to a small pool of water near the third chamber. Our guide Nguyen proudly told us that Emperor Khai Dinh (twelfth Emperor of the Nguyễn Dynasty in Vietnam) came to visit the grotto in 1917. See, I loved it when you got a guide who knew a lot about the history of the place you were visiting. While I was clueless about the stories he was telling us back then, I got to Google a lot of it when I got back home, and that was where the educational part of traveling came in.
I took mostly blurred images inside, but the roughness of the details, textures, and different layers of the stalactites and stalagmites presented a stunning visual choreography. It also did not help when your junk boat-mates were composed of four couples and I was the only solo-flight on the group, so I always found myself as the designated "can you take a nice picture of us two" guy.
It was alright, though; I became the favorite photographer of the Spanish couple who barely spoke English. They would just say "'cuse me Mark" and signal their hand to take a picture, and when it was my turn to see a nice spot to have my picture taken, they were all busy planting a kiss on each other. Downer! Next time, I plan to bring a girlfriend there. Promise.
We stayed inside about an hour; it was an easy stroll inside and kind of reminded me of our own Callao Cave in Tuguegarao, minus the man-made lighting system. Overall, it was a nice side trip to squeeze into our whole day of sailing around Halong Bay.
