If my Sunday is any less ordinary, it won’t be today. It’s because today is a challenging and exhilarating Sunday I’ve ever spent in my life. We begin by carrying 8 liters of water together with our lunch to start this caving adventure.
The fantastic four leaves about 9.30am, we follow Khun Wat, a local guide from Cave Lodge for about 50 mins before taking a break. While taking a break, Khun Wat cut a few bamboos and makes us a few walking sticks. We continue by trekking up the hill for about 60mins before reaching the entrance of our first cave, Spirit Cave, a small cave with some remains of 1,700yrs old of teak wood coffins.
As I’m quite claustrophobic and the tiny entrance to the cave doesn’t seem to help but intimidates me, I muster up my courage and stop my brain from thinking about it and crawl through the narrow hole. It is exhilarating! It’s totally dark but yet it’s amazing how we are inside a cave with the remains. It certainly feels like Angelina Jodie in Tomb Raider except I’ve two left feet and extremely clumsy. After the adrenaline from the first cave, I’m excited to get into the second cave, Waterfall Cave. We trek for another 45mins before reaching yet another intimidating narrow entrance of the cave. This waterfall cave is nothing similar from the coffin cave. This cave has a narrow crawling tunnel all the way with water still flowing through the cave. Lisa keeps encouraging me along the way in the tunnel. This girl is fierce even though she has her own fear of Spider. We finally end the waterfall Cave with a 30 metres deep underground waterfall. After the second cave, I was depleted and a little apprehensive on the third cave. Well, I’ve to move on.
As all of us are exhausted and hungry from the second cave, we decided to have our lunch outside the third cave, Fossil cave, a well decorated stalagmites and stalactites dry cave with some excellent examples of fossil shells, more than 200 million years old. We spend about 1 hour exploring the cave before walking up the hill for 1½ hours to a small Lahu village.
In the middle of the trekking, I broke one side of my shoe which has my sole all fallen out and to think that it’s not enough, coming to the end of the journey, the other shoe fails on me. I can’t help but to think that how this unfortunate occurrence can befall on me, isn’t it because I’m too stingy to spend on a good pair of trekking shoe (don’t tell me the answer) and surely complaining isn’t going to help. Thus, I bear the pain through the socks I’m wearing on a 2 hour walk through the magnificent karst landscape and fantastic Mountain View back to the guesthouse.
After cleaning ourselves from the mud, we went to the town for a fantastic dinner and hopping to buy a few DVDs for the remaining nights in Cave Lodge. To our disappointment, all the movies are in Thai with no English subtitles. So we decide to try our luck with the restaurant owner to see if they have any personal DVD collection. Turns out they have it but the mistress of the restaurant is reluctant to lend us the DVD because it belongs to her husband. Desperate time calls for desperate measure, Lisa initiate to put 1000 Baht deposit just so she could lend us the DVDs. In total, we borrowed 3 DVDS, Princess Diaries 2, Ali and Gangs of New York for our subsequent nights in Cave Lodge.
Till then, Time Out,
KN
The fantastic four leaves about 9.30am, we follow Khun Wat, a local guide from Cave Lodge for about 50 mins before taking a break. While taking a break, Khun Wat cut a few bamboos and makes us a few walking sticks. We continue by trekking up the hill for about 60mins before reaching the entrance of our first cave, Spirit Cave, a small cave with some remains of 1,700yrs old of teak wood coffins.
As I’m quite claustrophobic and the tiny entrance to the cave doesn’t seem to help but intimidates me, I muster up my courage and stop my brain from thinking about it and crawl through the narrow hole. It is exhilarating! It’s totally dark but yet it’s amazing how we are inside a cave with the remains. It certainly feels like Angelina Jodie in Tomb Raider except I’ve two left feet and extremely clumsy. After the adrenaline from the first cave, I’m excited to get into the second cave, Waterfall Cave. We trek for another 45mins before reaching yet another intimidating narrow entrance of the cave. This waterfall cave is nothing similar from the coffin cave. This cave has a narrow crawling tunnel all the way with water still flowing through the cave. Lisa keeps encouraging me along the way in the tunnel. This girl is fierce even though she has her own fear of Spider. We finally end the waterfall Cave with a 30 metres deep underground waterfall. After the second cave, I was depleted and a little apprehensive on the third cave. Well, I’ve to move on.
As all of us are exhausted and hungry from the second cave, we decided to have our lunch outside the third cave, Fossil cave, a well decorated stalagmites and stalactites dry cave with some excellent examples of fossil shells, more than 200 million years old. We spend about 1 hour exploring the cave before walking up the hill for 1½ hours to a small Lahu village.
In the middle of the trekking, I broke one side of my shoe which has my sole all fallen out and to think that it’s not enough, coming to the end of the journey, the other shoe fails on me. I can’t help but to think that how this unfortunate occurrence can befall on me, isn’t it because I’m too stingy to spend on a good pair of trekking shoe (don’t tell me the answer) and surely complaining isn’t going to help. Thus, I bear the pain through the socks I’m wearing on a 2 hour walk through the magnificent karst landscape and fantastic Mountain View back to the guesthouse.
After cleaning ourselves from the mud, we went to the town for a fantastic dinner and hopping to buy a few DVDs for the remaining nights in Cave Lodge. To our disappointment, all the movies are in Thai with no English subtitles. So we decide to try our luck with the restaurant owner to see if they have any personal DVD collection. Turns out they have it but the mistress of the restaurant is reluctant to lend us the DVD because it belongs to her husband. Desperate time calls for desperate measure, Lisa initiate to put 1000 Baht deposit just so she could lend us the DVDs. In total, we borrowed 3 DVDS, Princess Diaries 2, Ali and Gangs of New York for our subsequent nights in Cave Lodge.
Till then, Time Out,
KN
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