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Published: October 9th 2010
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in the caves
Can you see the elephant laying down? After leaving Pai a little later in the day than we expected and with Mark feeling under the weather we decided to go and stay n Chiang Mai for a few days rather than going straight out to Chiang Dao.
We got dropped of by minibus at Tapae Gate area of Chiang Mai which we were told was the backpackers area and had lots of hostels and guesthouses. We soon found one to rest though not the greatest we’d ever seen it was a roof over our heads. We soon realised that Chiang Mai is not much more than a big city with a really big night market - unless you want to take one of the numerous treks or tours on offer. We did decide to go to the Elephant Park and waterfall at Mae Rim as we had been told this was good. However the only part I liked was feeding the elephants bananas and sugarcane and seeing the baby elephant with its mum. The show was cruel really - just very trained elephants doing what elephants aren’t meant to do such as play football. We were then told by our tuk tuk driver that the waterfall was
closed as there wasn’t enough water!! That’s typical - rainy seasons only just finished!! So we travelled back to the hotel quite disappointed.
So day after that we decided to take a bus to Chiang Dao. This was definitely an interesting experience!! It was the local bus that travels to Tha Ton on the border and so picks up and drops off all along the route - including wherever people flag it down or press the stop button along the way!! Being the only two westerners on the bus along with not knowing when we were meant to get off made it a little nerve-wracking until the guard told us we had arrived at Chiang Dao and got off to help us unload our bags! What we thought would be a short walk to the guesthouse we had booked to stay in turned out to be a 6km walk!! Though we didn’t quite make it that far - about 3km into the walk a tuk tuk pulled up and asked if we wanted a lift. With Mark not feeling good again and it being the middle of the day we decided that a ride sounded like a good idea!
Mark wasn’t able to do anything in Chiang Dao as he wasn’t able to venture too far from the bathroom so I set out to find the caves 1km away. They are on the grounds of a Wat so you pay a ’donation’ to the temple to be able to go into the caves and then you are asked to ’tip’ your guide as they are a volunteer and don’t actually get paid. But the guide is worth the 100baht (about £2) otherwise you don’t get to go into the unlit areas of the caves. They guide you through these caves using only a gas lantern which is fairly unnerving when they are walking in front of you holding the lantern and you are walking behind in their shadow! I saw lots of really amazing rock formations and typically the Thai guide was able to point out ones that looked like things - often animals. As you walked around the caves there were offerings to Buddha at various places and Buddha images all throughout so it is also still a place of worship. The only lit part of the cave is the walkways that go down the reclining Buddha
statue which is used regularly by visiting and local Thais as a place of worship.
Once back at the guest house I took a welcome dip in their plunge pool which did wonders to cool me down after crawling through the caves.
That afternoon I took a walk in the opposite direction to a Wat on the hillside. It claims to only be 510 steps up but there were actually 550 steps (yes I counted!!). It was very peaceful and although it is an important Wat and burial place for an important Monk I only saw about 4 other people (not including the monks who live there). The funniest part of this walk was seeing a monk with a full arm of tattoos and an ipod in his ears!!
Mark was getting steadily worse and so after talking to the guesthouse owner Malee, who informed me that another one of her guests was feeling similar and had been diagnosed with Dengue Fever I decided it was time to look up the symptoms and get Mark the 70kms back to Chiang Mai so at least a pharmacy if not a hospital were accessible, and get him to rest which
in the caves
Offerings on a rock in the middle of unlit caves is about the only thing you can do for Dengue Fever!!
After another day of being really ill I went to see the pharmacist to try and get something for Mark. They gave him painkillers and strong antibiotics (the type that kill E - coli) to stop him being ill. After 1 day on these the change was remarkable and 3 days later he is feeling well again for the first time in about 3 weeks! So we have been out and about to the night bazaar and a temporary food / health market in the middle of town sampling some of the local cuisine! We stopped at a small bar the other night to celebrate Mark feeling better and met a lovely (if slightly eccentric) couple from New Zealand who have given us their contact info to get in touch when we go to New Zealand!!
Weathers still lovely if a little ‘sticky’, rainy season is all but over so just the odd downpour about once a week - the kind that floods the roads for about an hour!
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Beata and Tomek
us At Home Abroad
great photo;-)