The north-central Quang Binh Province authorities have proposed that State President Truong Tan Sang confer a Medal of Labor on Howard Limbert, an expert from the British Caving Association, for his great contribution to introducing Vietnamese caves to the world.
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The province’s Emulation and Reward Commission has also suggested that the same honor – the Medal of Labor, Class 3 – be given to Ho Khanh, 45, a Vietnamese colleague of the British expert in their exploration of caves in Vietnam.
Howard Limbert, 57, is the head of the British exploration team that has operated in the Phong Nha-Ke Bang area in the province over the past 24 years. Limbert has detected hundreds of caves in Quang Binh and taken steps to put 200 kilometers of local caves on the world list. Limbert and his colleagues have taken hundreds of thousands of beautiful photographs of caves in the Phong Nha-Ke Bang area of the province, drawing special attention from many major film companies throughout the world, such as BBC, NHK and National Geographic, as well as some of the world’s leading news agencies such as AP, AFP and Kyodo, the commission said. Meanwhile, Ho Khanh, a man from Quang Binh’s Bo Trach District, was the first to discover Son Doong Cave, a solutional cave (a cave usually formed in the soluble rock limestone) in Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park in 1991. The park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Quang Binh’s Bo Trach and Minh Hoa Districts, about 500 km south of Hanoi. In 2009, Khanh guided the Royal British caving exploration team, led by Howard, to explore this beautiful cave and eventually introduced it to the world. The American Business Insider Magazine later recognized Son Doong Cave as one of the world’s 12 most impressive caves. Meanwhile, Quang Binh has recently been listed number eight in The New York Times’ “52 Places to Go in 2014” ranking.
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