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Published: April 13th 2012
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We woke up pretty early this morning and walked over to a park that the cooking instructor pointed out that was near the market and the bus station. we wandered around for a bit and then climbed the karst with a small pavilion at the top of it. There were lots of steep stairs and they were wet from the rain the day and night before. The view from the top was really something. We then went back to the hotel and booked a trip to the water cave. The girl from the front desk walked us to the bus station and got us into a shuttle that was going to the starting point of the caves. Once there we were given tickets and waited for another bus along with about 10 other people. The bus that pulled up was in really bad shape and Dave and I ended up sitting in some seats that weren't even attached to the floor anymore. This was a crazy bumpy ride into the country side past some small villages and lots of rice fields. Once at the cave the locals were trying to sell their homemade reed sandals to go into the cave. You
had to wear some sort of sandals to go in but there were free rubber ones along the dock. I bought a pair for around $3.50 and they worked quite well. I actually dried them out and will bring them home. We had our swimsuits under our clothes so we locked our clothes up in a locker. We should have brought along a towel to dry off with at the end. The tour starts out in a canoe where you all duck and the guide paddles into the low cave. Once inside the cave widens out and you get out of the boat and can stand. The first thing you do is to walk to the top of the longest tunnel looking at formations and climbing on them. There were some natural waterfalls on the rocks and some small pools at the top you could swim around in. The coolest part of this tour was that you could touch whatever you want including stalactites and stalagmites. The guide was actually encouraging us to climb onto the larger formations. This would never fly in the US. At the bottom of the long branch they had a fake mud pit set up
you could go play in. We did for about 3 minutes before we got grossed out and rinsed off. There is a camera man that follows along with the group the whole time and you can buy some of the pictures when you get to this mud pit area. Once everyone was rinsed off we went off to another part of the cave that had hot springs. The hot springs were natural but the pools they had built into the cave to lay in were not. The higher up you went the hotter they got. There were stairs up to the top pools with a railing which was nice. They had some sort of cave changing rooms rigged up if you didn't have your swimming suit on at this point but everyone had theirs on beforehand. After about 45 minutes of relaxing in the pools we were guided back to the boats and rowed out. Here is where we needed the towels. We had to put our clothes over our wet suits. They did have a bathroom but we didn't know if we would have enough time to change before the bus came back to pick us up. Turns out
we did but at that point we had already put our dry clothes on over our suits. Two mini busses came to pick us up and bring us back to town where we jumped out and got into a waiting bus going back to town. The bus ride back to town was about $0.50. We went back to the hotel showered and went out to eat. A tour guide came up to us at the end of the meal and gave us info on a private bike tour. We were going to rent bikes the next day anyway so this was helpful. She offered to meet us the next morning and bring us on an all day tour, about 7 hours, for $15 total not each, we were shocked that it was so cheap. We walked around West street again before going to bed.
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