Blogs from Mae Hong Son, North-West Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 2

This is a fun place to scramble. Next time I will climb down the person sized hole into the cave inside, but seeing as the kids we were with weren't allowed to, it felt mean to do it this time. Ironically, when I got back to Cave Lodge, I had received an email from a Geocaching website and I searched for this area and discovered that there is a cache down there...... read more

The traditional leaf roof needs to be changed every 3/4 years. John and Nang are thinking about putting on an easier-to-maintain roof, but the leaves look so much nicer than some brightly coloured plastic. Also, having the leaf roof means that the skills to make these are passed on to the next generation, so good all round... except that I was very jealous of the roofers being able to climb around up there!... read more

No photos from this cave yet as I thought it was going to be wetter than it actually was. It is a passage through a mountain, a few low crawls but nothing unending. A massive stair climb to get to it, then once on the other side there are 3 more caves (2 of them with coffins) to explore. One is just a big playground! Such a steep dusty climb up then down, but fun :-) I'll go again, definitely in the rainy season as the low crawls become apnea swims :-) :-)... read more

Nang and John took us to a Shan town near Mae Hong Son to see a ceremony/celebration. Boys from local families were becoming novices, and they get dressed up, process to the temple, kneel and bow in the temple, then process out, take their finery off, and go to see if they want to become a monk. Their feet can't touch the ground, so when they're not in the temple they are carried around on men's shoulders. We then stayed at the temple for a big lunch which was delicious.... read more

Lots of lovely things happened today that made me feel like I was settling in to my new surroundings. The first was that Ing-Ka suggested I try something new for breakfast. She clearly felt comfortable enough with me to criticise my rice-soup habit, and made me an omelette. Another thing was rearranging my bedroom (see picture). Another - Lii laughed when I asked her for a watermelon shake (to my un-Thai ears, the conversation went (me) "tang moo pan", (Lii) "eh?!??", (me) "tang moo pan", (Lii) continue to look blank, (me) *get watermelon from fridge, (Lii) "ah, tang moo pan", (me) "ban?", (Lii) "pan", (me) "pan", (Lii) *nods and smile "pan" then walks away laughing and talking about tang moo pan to the other Thai speaker). We played in the river with Dtae and he's getting ... read more