More. Curvy. Roads. *sigh* Once again the road trip was a pretty rough. This one was only a little more than an hour long, but everyone was turning a little green. (We likely would have both been sick if it had lasted 5 more minutes.) When we were freed from the minibus, two others (Helen and her niece Sally) from our bus were also heading to Cave Lodge. We adopted Helen as our Thai aunt. (Sally called her Auntie, and I started calling her Aunt Thai!)
As soon as we arrived, we booked a whitewater kayaking tour for the next day. (We thought it was going to be through some of the caves, but I think that was a different tour.) The following morning, we once again hit the curvy roads on our way to the launch site. But this time, I didn’t make it and decorated the road with my breakfast. It was not embarrassing. Not at all. Really. (Believe me yet?) Luckily we were in a tuk-tuk and I managed to get my head through the side bars before it got on everyone. (Also luckily, a truck was not coming the other direction to take my head off.) Thus began the adventures of our misfit kayaking group. We were 11 people in 6 boats, and within the first few minutes one of the girls was covered in a mysterious rash. A few minutes later, her brother (who also has a bit of the rash) flipped his boat. Later in the day his friend also flipped out of his boat. We were a mess. But other than that, it was an amazing day with fun rapids and incredible views! (And it wasn’t too cold!)
Brandon likes to claim that he did all the work, but that is just ridiculous!
For our second day we wanted to do their big caving trek through the Tham Nam Lang cave. But the guide gave us the impression that it would have been a bit tough for me. So Brandon went with the small group, while I enjoyed some closer caves with Helen and Sally and relaxed.
Here is a recap of Brandon’s adventure:
I signed up to crawl, swim, climb, and trek through one of the largest caves in northern Thailand. This cave was actually discovered by the owner of our hotel, and I think only a couple of hundred people have ever, ever ventured into this cave. Talk about adventurous, I was hooked and in. We started off the day with a tuk-tuk that was trying to set the land speed record, and we arrived at a hut in the middle of nowhere in record time. There was a family of gibbons waiting for us, hoping that we had a banana or some other fruit to share. When we didn’t, they stared at us and continued their harsh judgement which led to supreme disappointment. Moving on, we trekked around 30 minutes up a mountain, climbing over fallen trees, keeping to a deer path, then 15 minutes down until the guide stopped us. We were there and we hadn’t even realized it, we were paying so close attention to our steps. There was a mountainous cliff in front of us with a massive opening. We were going to climb through, then continue 4 km into the cave, then 4 km out of the cave. The entrance was at the very top, and we first had to scale down some slippery limestone and rocks. We were scaling down rocks the same size as us! I had no idea how we were going to get back up, but we’ll figure that out later. We walked along the side of the cave until it seemed to dead end, and then we got into the water to continue forward. The water got pretty deep in some parts and was moving swiftly. The bottom of the river was made of sharp limestone, slippery stones, and clay. We moved through waste deep water until we reached another impasse – a gigantic wall of stalactites. The guide said usually they’d go under water and surface on the other side of the stalactites, but the water was too high and moving too fast so we’d go another way. We then proceeded to crawl over a wall of limestone, almost like rounded stalagmites, squeezed through a wall where I could barely fit and had to hold my rucksack behind me, until we emerged on the other side. We then had to side step while hugging the wall before leaping down on the other side. Incredible and awesome. No room for error, no room for fear of the dark and no room for claustrophobia. I think I forgot to mention the cave was pitch black except for the torch on our helmets. The cave was also quiet minus the sound of rushing water. Some parts had fork tail swallows and bats, but other parts of the cave were devoid of anything living that I could see. Where there were flying creatures, there was also flying creatures dung. And where there’s dung, there’s animals that live off the dung. We encountered some really large millipedes (that tickled my hands when I held them). Back to the story, we continued moving up the cave and I had no sense of time or distance. I couldn’t tell you how long we’d been walking or what time it was. We just kept moving forward, crossing the water when necessary, walking through the water when necessary, climbing over the cave walls when the other parts were blocked and continued inwards. One of the water crossings, the guy in front of my lost his grip and started floating downstream, unable to get his feet under him. Lucky for him, I was there to grab him and pull him to the shore. I let him go in front of me, just in case he lost his footing again and I had a bad feeling about proceeding. When I got about knee deep into the water, I was balancing on a limestone edge and slipped, lodging my right foot between a sharp surface and a large rock. When I moved to get my foot unstuck (instinct to get my footing back), the large rock shifted, and I ended up slicing my shin up, about a 3 inch gash that was super deep. Awesome… Oh well, carry on. We kept moving into the cave and a little bit later, the guide stopped us for lunch: fried rice, a hardboiled egg, a bag of chicken, and a muffin. The guide saw my leg and got out a first aid kit, cleaned the wound, put a Band-Aid on it, wrapped it with tape and that was all we could do for the moment. Turns out we had only gone in about 2 km, we still had 2 km to go before we were to turn around and head out. Ouch. We finished lunch and headed further into the cave, looking at incredible cave formations the whole way. A stalagmite grows at 1 cm per 100 years. The stalagmites were huge, dating the cave back 500,000+ years! I think, there had to be one stalagmite that was about 30 meters, tall. So cool!!! We kept going in deeper until we got to an island surrounded by cave formations with an incredibly high ceiling. This was our turning back point. We had made in 4 km into the cave. This cave was at least 16 km long, and we could’ve continued deeper, but we were losing daylight so it was time to head back. Going back turned out to be a lot easier. We pretty much walked through the water, and going with the current instead of against it cut our travel time in half. We still had a few climbs, but we ended up getting back to the opening of the cave around 5pm. We’d left for the cave around 7 am. Great couple of days, I’m spent! Gash in my leg equals another round of antibiotics and more anti-septic cream, but I’ll be damned if I let a flesh wound slow me down.
So yea – it was a great place to go! There were so many caves to see and trekking adventures that we could have stayed in this area longer to explore if we hadn’t had another tour booked. If outdoor adventures are your thing, then look up Cave Lodge for your next trip to Thailand.
Brandon & Devon (BaD) Journey 