scooters and Tham Lod

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So we woke up early, and went to the scooter place. Admittedly, we were both a bit nervous because neither Marieke nor myself had ever ridden before. We got some breakfast, and set off pretty quickly though. After a few minutes we began to get the hang of going forward/turning/stopping/etc... you know, all the important things, and we were off. The trip to Soppong (near the cave lodge we were to stay at) was extremely curvy and we went through numerous hills and hairpin turns.

By the way, my white helmet made me look more like a god damn Storm Trooper than anything else... that or I was about to get shot out of a cannon.

The scenery was absolutely fantastic, though, which made me extremely glad we decided to take this mode of transport. Northern Thailand is truly a gorgeous area of the world.

We arrived to the cave lodge about three hours after departing Pai, and checked in to our new bungalow. An Australian man named John Spies owns the lodge, and is an extremely interesting individual himself. He's lived in the Golden Triangle area for many years, and has been charged with murder, lived through fires in his guest house, and more. The lodge offers a serene setting for travelers, though, with a nice fire pit in the central part of the open air reading room.

After getting our stuff to our room, we walked to Tham Lod cave and hired a guide who spoke no English aside from the occasional "crocodile" or "eagle" as she pointed out the different shapes made by stalagtites and stalagmites. In addition to being simply gigantic, the cave also houses old coffins from about 1,500 years ago. It was rather remarkable to think that the wood had lasted that whole time, but it was still there! There were also cave drawings thousands of years old: Standing there looking at them was a rather humbling experience, as it put some perspective on the relatively miniscule amount of time we're all on this Earth. We then were able to witness the spectacle of birds flying in while bats fly out, a process that takes nearly an hour and usually results in at least a few birds dead or unconscious due to midair collisions (I think we saw three birds fall). It was weird because the birds fly in, and then just fly in a seemingly mindless circle. That's probably part of the reason they're still so low on the food chain.

After our cave experience, we returned to the lodge for dinner and to sit around the fire. We met an Aussie named Dave and an Italian named Max, both of whom were very nice and fun to talk to about anything and everything. We went to bed around 11 I guess.

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