Vietnam s Son Doong A rare journey inside the world s largest cave passage

You've got to see this. It is the largest cave in the world in central Vietnam. We at 60 Minutes explored the cave. We have a long tradition at 60 Minutes of taking our viewers to places that they've never been, maybe never heard of, and are not likely to ever go. And we have done that for decades here, all around the world. But this was completely unique. This week on 60 Minutes, we take an epic journey through an enormous cave called Son Dong, right in the slender middle of Vietnam, and you can't believe the images. The height of these caverns is 65 stories. It is a football field and a half wide. You could put the Great Pyramid of Giza inside this cave, and it was just a joy to be able to go through Son Dong and then bring it back to our audience. So what are we about to do? Well, this is the beginning of a long walk. One of our greatest producers here at 60 Minutes, Nicole Young, came to me with this idea to go hiking through the largest cave in the world, and I turned her down. I said, Nick, it's a hole in the ground. I mean, what are we going to take pictures of? And it's in a cave, so it's dark. Do you think we're going to make it? I'm certain we're going to make it because you're the producer, and you told me we're going to make it. All right, let's do it. The thing about this cave is that it fuels the local economy around this national park where this cave sits, and that can help offer opportunities to a community that they otherwise didn't have before when it was discovered in 2009. Our team had to meet with the Vietnamese government, and we needed to promise them and give them our word that we weren't going to desecrate the land in any way, and they were very serious about that. To get to Son Dong, you have to hike through the jungle for a day and a half. There's no other way to get there. No roads. It's completely remote, and so you're crossing rivers. We had 20 river crossings on that route. You think, how can the largest cave in the world not be found until you go to the jungle in Vietnam? The jungle was the hardest part. The jungle was dense. There were snakes. There was mud, and it just was so hard to move step by step. We discovered that leeches are plentiful, and every once in a while, we would have to stop, take off our boots, and pick the leeches out of our boots. We had heard a fact that during the Vietnam War, many American soldiers had foot rot. They were in water for so long that their feet used to rot, and it was a very bizarre feeling to have wet feet for 10 to 12 hours a day while you were just walking. Just one of the challenges of this epic journey, but when we got to the caves, was it worth it? To get us through this cave, we had an expert climbing team showing us how to do it, rappelling down walls, climbing up through rocks, and all of that. There's absolutely no way we would have survived this without this team of climbers who really know what they're doing. This tour group knew where to light, how to light, knew how to help us figure out where to go, helped us know what points of the cave were the best places to highlight. We're about 600 feet below the surface, and I'm standing on what's called a stalagmite. At one point, I got up on a giant stalagmite, well over 100 feet tall, maybe 200 feet tall, huge thing, and it's domed on the top. You rolling? I'm rolling. Here we go. Now the thing I learned about the cave is that everything is wet, because the groundwater above us is raining down all the time. So now I'm on top of this tower, the top is rounded, the top is wet, and it's a couple of hundred feet down. Regret is probably not too strong a word. As I was standing there, I was thinking, this is it, this is the last dumb thing I get to do. And somehow the climbing team got me both up there and off of there without me falling down. They told us that this was considered a level six cave for caving. Nobody in our team knew what that meant, but level six is the highest level of caving anyone can do, apparently, and none of us had any real caving experience. So we had no idea what we were really going into. We were all very fit, but every single step in its own way had its own risk. Proper Nicole Young a** kicking. The environment of the cave is really unlike anything. What you hear is a constant roar, because the river that carved this cave is still running on the floor of the cave. When you're in the parts of the cave where there are no skylights, where the roof hasn't caved in, it's utterly dark. The only thing you can see is what's at the end of the light on your helmet, and you're pointing that down on your feet, so you can make sure you're not stepping off some cliff somewhere. So it was a unique experience, to say the least. Nick, if I do this, that means I blew it, and I need to do another take and start at the beginning. You just realize that you were in some place that was just so special and so undiscovered. They only allow a thousand explorers to enter the cave each year, and we were given the last slot available for this year's tours, because someone else canceled. I think we got it. The first two times I pitched Scott Pelly this story, he said no. And then the third time, he finally said yes. And then while we were in the cave, he said, why did I say no to this again? And I said, I don't know. It's really hard to get into, and I'm really grateful that we were able to get in, because it's really one of the greatest things we've ever done. I've had such good fortune. In 27 years at 60 Minutes, I have been just about everywhere on Earth, from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle, and everything in between. I've never seen anything approaching this before. I am so glad I had a chance to see it in my lifetime.