Caving and Kayaking at Cave Lodge

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We left Chiang Mai by local bus, heading five hours north to a place called Cave Lodge near the town of Suppong. The road wound its way through forested foothills, lurching from left to right at hairpin turns. The fresh mountain air rushed through the open bus windows, keeping us wide awake and enthralled by the beauty of the hills we passed. The bus dropped off most of its passengers in the traveler hub of Pai, but we stayed on another hour, disembarking on an empty road next to a sign reading "9 km to Cave Lodge." We waited a few minutes in the hope that a taxi or pickup might spontaneously appear, but pretty soon it was clear that we needed to be proactive to get ourselves the 9 km to our destination. Jeff checked a nearby guesthouse, and the friendly owner offered to drive into town and find us two motorbike taxis. In thanks, we sat down at the guesthouse restaurant for a cup of fresh mountain coffee and left a nice tip. Soon after we finished our coffee two mopeds arrived, their drivers sporting orange taxi driver vests. We loaded our packs onto the fronts of the bikes, between the drivers' knees, climbed onto the moped seats, and clung to the rear bar as we whined and chugged our way 9 kilometers up and down hills and past tiny thatch-hut villages. The mopeds dropped us at Cave Lodge, which was a cluster of thatch and wood bungalows and an open all-wood shelter with a hammock and some tables, all scattered haphazardly on a wooded hill above a small river. When we arrived there were only two other guests there, an Argentinian couple named Mariana and Tomas. We put our bags in a simple one-room thatch bungalow with a foam mattress on a raised platform and a window facing the woods and river beyond. A squat toilet was a little ways up the path in a wooden outhouse. Cherry tomatoes grew in a garden beside our hut, and fruit trees shaded the area. We set up our mosquito net, since there were huge holes in the thatch walls and no window screens, and joined Mariana and Tomas in the main shelter to chat and eat some dinner. The shelter looked out on the river and surrounding trees, and countless butterflies, birds and dragonflies buzzed and flitted from branch to branch. Two cats and three dogs wandered around Cave Lodge, vacuuming up accidentally dropped foodscraps and whimpering for attention. The food, cooked by smiling local women, was pretty good, and the location was quiet and peaceful. As we chatted with the Argentinians a heavy rain began to fall, soaking the trees and leaking through the shelter's rough roof. The pouring stopped as suddenly as it had started, and we all drifted off to bed in our bungalows in the complete darkness. I slept well despite the damp mattress, lulled by the humming of crickets and the dripping of rain off the leaves.

Somehow, ironically, the irritating whirring and grinding sounds of construction had followed us all the way to the woods of northern Thailand. We woke, incredulous, to the sounds of heavy machines clearing land near the riverbanks. We had breakfast with Tomas and Mariana, then said goodbye as they left to head to Pai. Jeff and I were alone at Cave Lodge for the rest of the day and that night, and we took advantage of the peaceful solitude to read and relax all day, with a brief trip to the river to wade and explore. In the late afternoon, we set out to walk to the exit of nearby Tham Lod cave, where every day at sunset thousands of bats fly from the cave and are replaced by thousands of swifts. We followed a trail through the woods, reaching the cave about half an hour before sunset. The cave was enormous and full of huge stalactite and stalagmite formations. The river passed all the way through it, flowing calmly from the cave mouth. And everywhere, filling the sky and cave entrance and the cave itself, were birds and bats, swooping and swarming and darting in the semi-darkness. The cave ground was thickly coated in bat guano, and we trudged through the umpleasant mess, up a feather and guano-covered ladder, to a viewing platform high up inside the cave. That high, the bats and birds seemed disturbingly close, and we both had a moment of claustraphobia as the white noise of thousands of flapping wings overwhelmed us. We stayed on the platform until we were able to relax, attempted some photos of the bird/bat madness with the background of sparkling rock, then moved cautiously down the ladder again. As I began my descent, a bird smacked suddenly into my arm, cauing me to yelp and nearly stumble in the guano muck. I scrambled out of the cave quickly, followed by Jeff, who had a lovely splatter of bird poop on his shoulder. Jeff jumped in the river to rinse off, and then we headed back through the woods in the darkness. We took a different path in hopes of finding a shortcut, and instead found a crumbled bridge across the river, which might have been passable in daylight but was ominous and dangerous in the dark. We backtracked and hiked the 45 minutes back to Cave Lodge along our original path. We showered and had some dinner, then went to bed early. It was somehow a little spooky being the only guests there that night, and we both tensed a few times at what sounded like footsteps outside our bungalow. There were still bandits in the area, and our thatch walls could be very easily sliced open with a knife. But soon the only noises were cicadas and frogs, and we slept soundly beneath our mosquito net until construction jarred us awake again the next morning.

We spent another quiet day at Cave Lodge. We had breakfast, read for a while, and Jeff napped while I washed laundry in the sink. Around midday we were joined at the lodge by a group of five Australians. We spent the rest of the day chatting with them, and ended up doing close to nothing all day. We did, however, sign up for a kayak trip the next morning, down the river through Tham Lod cave and a few kilometers beyond. As usual there, we went to bed early, but we read for a while in our bungalow before shutting the lights off to sleep. Lured by the light, enormous hand-sized moths fluttered in through our open window, desperately courting the lightbulb, tossing their bodies against it repeatedly with a startling "tink" sound. Their wings sounded like a cat's purring, and they were large enough to cause a startling "thud" when they clumsily smacked against the walls and ceiling. Even after the lights were out a few of them remained, and we woke a few times during the night to purring sounds followed by heavy thuds.

We woke and joined the Australians for breakfast, and then all seven of us geared up for our kayak trip. Two local guides joined us and helped us to carry the two-person inflatable kayaks down to the river. They spoke almost no English, which was unfortunate since we had a lot of questions about the caves that they couldn't answer. We all donned life jackets and helmets, then climbed into our kayaks to set out. Jeff and I shared a kayak, with me in front and he in back. We all set out in the surprisingly demanding current. At times it was slow and leisurely, but other areas were full of rocks and we fought the current and splashed clumsily over rocks and branches. We got thoroughly soaked, and had a blast. One of the kayaks, shared by two of the Aussie guys, ripped a few minutes into our trip. Jeff and I were ahead with one of the guides and one other Aussie kayak, and the five of us waited, confused, when the others didn't appear. Finally our guide took off trudging upriver to find out what was going on. The four of us waited, and soon Jeff's curiousity had him following our guide. The two of them returned to report no injuries to people, just a boat, and we all waited for the other guide to hike back up to Cave Lodge to fetch another kayak. Then we were off again, into the dark cave entrance. We were given headlamps to attach to our helmets, and we moved slowly into the cave, catching the shimmering eyes of bats as they clung upside down to the cave ceiling. We stopped halfway through the cave to climb out of our kayaks and explore. My flip flops were terrible for climbing the slick rocks, so I went barefoot, gingerly picking my way through the beautiful rock formations. The rocks were carved into beautiful shapes and accented with glittering minerals. A few bats swooped over us, and water dripped from the ceiling. We followed our guide into the cave and then back to the kayaks again, finishing our dark trip through Thom Lod and blinking as we entered the sunlight at the other end. We then climbed out of our boats again, to visit a cave called Hair Cave, a short walk through the woods near Thom Lod's exit. We climbed over vines and eased ourselves into a very small crevice to enter a deep underground cave full of countless tiny stalactites which made the cave look a bit like it was covered in dreadlocks. We followed the guide through a variety of small rooms, slipping a bit on the damp mossy rocks. It was beautiful and eerie, but the air was oddly stale and the darkness seemed ominous. We found sleepy bats clinging to the walls, blinking and twitching as we framed them with our headlamps. Muddy and damp, we left the cave the way we'd come and returned to the waiting kayaks to finish our trip down the river. We fought a number of rapids, at one point getting stuck sideways between two rocks and nearly flooding as the water rushed into our boat. Two other boats came up behind us, creating a pileup of kayaks and people. Jeff jumped out of our boat and managed to drag us free, and we were on our way again. We got to ride down a small cement dam, dropping down about five feet and splashing as we hit the bottom. The river wove through trees and past a few small houses, and our trip ended at another (much bigger and quite unrideable) dam, where the Cave Lodge pickup was waiting to haul our boats, paddles and very wet selves back to the lodge.

We were all very tired after our kayaking adventure, and after eating lunch we drifted off to our respective rooms for naps. Deciding that we had gotten a good dose of Cave Lodge adventure and relaxation, Jeff and I decided to leave the next day and head to Pai. We finished up our last day at Cave Lodge with a meal with the Aussies, then spent our last night in our bungalow. The next morning we packed up our bags, ate breakfast, and hiked up to the nearby road in hopes of hitchiking to Suppong to catch the bus. After about twenty minutes, when not a single vehicle aside from a moped had passed us, I went back to Cave Lodge to hire the truck--for too much money--to take us to town. Of course, as soon as we set out in the pickup another nearly-empty truck pulled up behind us. We almost certainly could have gotten a free ride in their truck bed, instead of paying, but so it goes. We were dropped at the bus station in Suppong, and waited about 15 minutes for the small local bus to pull in. The ride to Pai was only about an hour, and for half of it (until they got off on an empty road above some beautiful green cliffs) we sat next to a hilltribe family, who were probably from the Black Lahu tribe. There was a tiny woman with a wide-eyed baby boy tied to her back, and a man with a million wrinkles carving his face into what looked like an elephant's hide. We weren't sure if he was the baby's father or grandfather, but he cooed over it endlessly with a proud smile. The woman had stretched ears, which is very common with many hilltribes, and she was excited to see that Jeff's ears matched hers and fascinated by the clear plastic tunnels he was wearing. He had an extra pair, and he decided to give them to her. She struggled to put the plastic into her ears, laughing at the situation. When they got off the bus they gave us huge smiles and waves, and then walked into the hills as the bus lurched its way down the winding road to Pai.

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Comments

[Cassandra]

KITTY!! I miss kitties. But not as much as I miss you.

[Nic Lelm]

Kitty kitty kitty
Eli seen these pics over my shoulder and he is quite jealous!