Puong Cave

Not every cave allows a visitor to enter by boat. Puông Cave is one of the rare places where that is possible.

Puông Cave sits in the limestone of the Lũng Nham range, toward the north of Ba Bể National Park. A boat sets out from the Buốc Lốm landing and follows the Năng River downstream for about one kilometer. The river leads straight to the mouth of the cave. When the boat slips through that opening, the world changes.

Inside, the stretch of the Năng River that flows through the limestone is close to 300 meters long. The roof is higher than 20 meters overhead, and the cave measures 30 meters across on average. It is far roomier than the word cave leads most people to expect.

As the boat goes deeper, the daylight fades. On both sides and overhead are bands of stalactites, stone columns and great blocks of rock, in shapes and colors that nature made. They formed over millions of years. Water rich in minerals fell drop by drop, left a little of those minerals behind, and quietly built them up until today.

Bats make their home here as well: 23 species of them, in numbers that reach tens of thousands. When the boat moves slowly, the beating of wings comes down from the ceiling like a sound from another world. Bats play an important part in the ecosystem of a cave, and they are part of the reason this one is kept safe inside the national park.

Yet Puông holds another layer of story that many people never hear. Researchers from the Institute of Archaeology and the provincial museum report a find in the upper cave, in the village of Bản Vài in Khang Ninh commune. They found almost 100 archaeological objects, mostly pieces of stone and bone. Their first results show that this was a place where prehistoric people of the Hòa Bình culture lived roughly 8,000 to 9,000 years ago.

That is important scientific information about the place. The Hòa Bình culture is the name for a prehistoric period in Southeast Asia. It is named after Hòa Bình in Vietnam, where French scientists first found and described this kind of site in the early 20th century. People of this culture lived in rock shelters and caves, beside rivers or lakes, and used stone tools shaped by chipping.

So Puông is not only a place of geology. It is also a place where people once lived. The river running through would have given them water and food, and the rock walls would have kept off wind and rain. A boat that floats through a cave millions of years old passes through the cave whose upper part was home to prehistoric people some 9,000 years ago.

When the boat comes out, daylight returns. Behind it, the Năng River flows out of the mountain, just as it did before any person gave it a name.