The Most Beautiful Caves in Vietnam
5 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful caves in Vietnam are Son Doong Cave, Tam Cốc-Bích Động and Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường). The list covers 5 caves. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Central and northern Vietnam are built of limestone that monsoon rains have dissolved for millions of years into tower karst and hollow mountains. In Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng, a World Heritage national park, underground rivers have carved some of the largest cave passages known, many of them explored only in recent decades by Vietnamese and British teams. Further north, the same rock rises from rice paddies in sheer green towers.
Son Doong Cave, found by a local man and surveyed in 2009, has a main passage big enough to hold city blocks, with its own jungle growing beneath two collapsed skylights. Tam Cốc-Bích Động in Ninh Bình is reached by rowing boat along a river through three caves between karst peaks and rice fields. Paradise Cave, discovered in 2005, runs for some 31 kilometres through chambers of white stalactites and stalagmites. Phong Nha Cave is entered by boat along an underground river, its mouth opening from the Son River.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Son Doong Cave | Cave | |
| 2 | Tam Cốc-Bích Động | Cave | |
| 3 | Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường) | Show cave | |
| 4 | Hang Én (swift cave) | Cave | |
| 5 | Phong Nha Cave | Cave |
01 Son Doong Cave
Vietnam · 33.3 km from Đồng Hới17.457° N 106.288° E
Trantuanviet · CC BY-SA 4.0 This is not a show cave with paths and lights. Access is by permit and in small numbers: the first commercial expedition went in 2013, and since 2017 only one licensed operator, Oxalis Adventure, has been allowed to take visitors. Trips are demanding multi-day camping expeditions graded as challenging, and they call for real fitness. The cave is closed to tourism from September to December, when monsoon rains raise the river to dangerous levels and the ecosystem is left to recover. A proposed cable car through the cave was abandoned after opposition from conservationists and residents.
Did you know? The cave is so big that it makes its own weather: river mist and air from the collapsed dolines form fog and drifting clouds inside.
02 Tam Cốc-Bích Động
Vietnam · 7.3 km from Ninh Bình20.218° N 105.916° E
Image by nghi123mt from Pixabay Bích Động, "the green cave", lies about 2 km from the Tam Cốc landing. It was named in 1773 by the court official Nguyễn Nghiễm, and old tradition ranks it as the second most beautiful cave in the southern realm, after the Hương Tích cave at Hương Sơn. It combines a dry grotto halfway up the hillside, which holds a Buddhist pagoda arranged on several levels, with Xuyên Thủy, a dark, flooded tunnel about 350 m long that boats pass through beneath the mountain. Nearby are further caves, including Động Tiên with its coloured dripstone and Thiên Hương, a dry grotto with a shrine to Queen Nguyễn Thị Sen, whom local tradition credits with bringing embroidery to the village of Văn Lâm.
Did you know? The Bích Động pagoda dates from the early Lê dynasty, and its three temples, Lower, Middle and Upper, climb the mountain in tiers.
03 Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường)
Vietnam17.520° N 106.223° E
Image by dietmarlaschinski from Pixabay The entrance sits at about 350 m above sea level in forested karst, and the path up from the car park — done on foot or by electric cart — is part of the experience.
Did you know? The local man credited with finding the cave, Ho Khanh, is the same forest worker who stumbled on the entrance of Hang Son Doong, the world's largest cave passage.
04 Hang Én (swift cave)
Vietnam · 32.3 km from Đồng Hới17.435° N 106.300° E
Jérémie B. · CC BY-SA 4.0 The national park around it protects one of the oldest and most extensive karst landscapes in Asia, a forested limestone plateau riddled with caves and underground rivers, and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Hang Én lies in its roadless core. The way in on foot crosses jungle hills and river valleys and passes Bản Đoòng, a tiny village of the Bru-Vân Kiều people, before the first great mouth of the cave opens ahead.
Did you know? A local man, Ho Khanh, came across the cave around 1990 while searching the forest for fragrant wood.
05 Phong Nha Cave
Vietnam · 35.5 km from Đồng Hới17.582° N 106.282° E
Image by pen_ash from Pixabay Phong Nha is the best-known cave of Phong Nha–Kẻ Bàng National Park, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. The limestone here has been forming since the Paleozoic, about 400 million years ago, making it the oldest major karst area in Asia, and the park contains hundreds of caves and underground rivers. Following the 2025 provincial reorganisation in Vietnam, the area belongs to Quảng Trị Province (formerly Quảng Bình).
Did you know? In 1824 Emperor Minh Mạng granted the cave an honorific title as a divine spirit, and later Nguyễn kings honoured it again.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful caves in Vietnam?
- On our list, Son Doong Cave ranks first, followed by Tam Cốc-Bích Động and Paradise Cave (Thiên Đường).
- How big is Son Doong Cave?
- Son Doong's main passage is more than 5 kilometres long and in places over 200 metres high and about 150 metres wide, making it one of the largest known cave passages in the world by volume.
- When was Son Doong discovered?
- A local man, Hồ Khanh, found the entrance around 1990 but later lost the way back. He relocated it in 2008, and a British Cave Research Association expedition surveyed the cave in 2009.
- How many caves are on this list in Vietnam?
- The list covers 5 caves.