Advertisement
Published: March 13th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Mouth of the Cave
The cave entrance - you really get the perspective when you see the size of the kayak next to it... Today was by far one of the most interesting days I think I've ever experienced in my life. It was very much like something out of "Ripley's Believe It or Not". In fact, I'm not even sure that "interesting" is quite the right word for it. Maybe "bizzare" or "freakish" is better... Anyway, it was strange.
The day itself was fine and started out as any other here in paradise - perfect. Sun shining, birds singing, fish swimming, sea eagles diving, and crabs crabbing. All was as it should be. We took another dive which was brilliant - I went down with Ray again, but not for as long this time. Then we all were going to take the dingys (or the kayaks) and go on a bit of a field trip into this cave where there apparently lives a whole little community of Burmese people who collect the bird's nests that are used to make bird's nest soup (an Asian delicacy which is also quite pricey). These aren't the only people the collect them, but I think they probably collect a large amount of the ones in the market.
The cave where they live is what appears to
be a completely hollowed-out island. There's one entrance which is through an opening at the base of the island which apparently can only be transversed during certain hours of the day (when the water level isn't too high).
Jean and I kayaked out to the island ahead of everyone else and were the first to enter the cave. Once we got past the mouth of the cave, it opened up and was so huge, I couldn't believe it. Took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, but then I could see an opening in the top of the cave where some sunlight shone in. There were caverns and other little hollow places along the sides of the cave, and there, in the back, was what looked like scaffolding which we soon realized was the platforms on which these Burmese people lived. By "platforms" I really mean "lines of bamboo tied together with grass". I'm not kidding. This little city of bamboo looked like all it would take would be for someone to sneeze a little too hard, and the whole thing might just collapse into the water. It's difficult to say how many people lived
Bamboo Catwalk
Looks safe, doesn't it? on this...uh...structure, but it was certainly a lot more than you'd think.
The other thing that took some getting used to was the sounds in the cave. Hard to tell exactly what the sound was, but it was loud and almost shrill at times. My guess is that we were probably hearing the calls of the famous birds of the nests that they use in the soup - most likely screaming out their aggravation at the way their nests kept disappearing. It could also have been bats, but we'd been in other caves with bats and never heard this sound before.
Once the dingy's and other kayaks arrived, we maneuvered ourselves over to the edge of the bamboo structure and were promptly invited up for a look at where they go to collect the birds nests which was clearly somewhere deeper in the cave. No way was I going to pass that up! So we all clammered out of our various boats and up a bit of a dodgy ladder (again with the bamboo & grass rope), and then slowly begain to make our way down bamboo catwalks (some of which had seemingly NOTHING holding the bamboo together
so that they'd all roll around when you stepped on them).
Steve was behind me followed by Katie & Warren and kept making comments about how not safe this was and how he was going to fall to his death and whatever else. Finally he decided to bag it and go back to the dingy to wait for us, but the rest of us plowed on. Down more bamboo catwalks and up over rocks, following a narrow little path that we could barely see in the dark with only one flashlight being held by our Burmese guide. Finally we arrived in an area on the rock that was pretty deep into the cave. There were several bamboo ladders (similar to the one we had used to climb out of our boats) only these bamboo ladders looked to be about 3 stories high at least - they really could have been a lot higher, but as my eyes follwed them up, they disappeared into the inky black depths of the cavern above.
We waited until everyone had joined us and then our guide climbed up the ladder and mimed for us that this was where they did their work
Ride 'Em Cowboy...er...girl!
Me & Jean getting a ride back to the boats from the bird's nest cave - you can see the entrance of the cave in the background. (Taken by Nancy) and collected the bird's nests. We all stared in amazement. Then, since there wasn't anything else to see up there and our guide didn't seem to know any show tunes, we turned and began our decent back to the boats.
You might think it ends there, but it doesn't...or, well, not for me anyway. I climbed back down the ladder and stepped into the kayak Jean & I had used, but, as everyone who has EVER stepped into a canoe or kayak or any other small sea vessel knows, you need to step directly into the center of the boat or - what happens? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? That's right, the boat will tip and you will take an unplanned swim. Well, as you might have guessed I was in too much of a hurry or something and stepped just slightly off-center enough to cause the kayak to wobble which caused me to lose my balance completely and go down...HARD. Naturally I wasn't planning to be underwater so I got a good mouthful, whacked my hand pretty hard on the side of the kayak, and then emerged back on the surface laughing hysterically. Before I knew it, everyone else was laughing too - including all the cave dwellers which I really thought was funny. I managed to haul myself back up into the kayak and started ringing out my shirt when I noticed Steve holding out my sunglasses which he had grabbed with cat-like reflexes when he saw me go into the water (they were sitting on the top of my head and I would have lost them for sure if he hadn't!)
Jean and I then hooked our kayak onto one of the dingy's and got pulled back to the cats. Upon arriving, everyone proceeded to take a dip in the water to try and wash all of the...stuff that had managed to cover us during our expedition into the bowels of the cave. It was really pretty foul (no pun intended).
Next comes dinner - good thing 'cause I'm just about beyond hungry. Oh, and I should probably mention that the pictures in this blog come by courtesy of Shauna as I didn't have my camera with me.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.25s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 20; qc: 105; dbt: 0.1293s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb