We packed up our stuff, waved goodbye to Krabi and drove
north. At this point in the trip, we
struggled a bit with what to do next. In
the low season many of the west-facing beaches are rough, and the weather can
be unpredictable, so there are very few tourists around compared to the high
season, which means a lot of places are closed.
Some of the potential places to visit, such as Ko Lanta, Ko Phi Phi, and
the Trang Islands, were sure to be very slow at this time of the year so we
decided not to go and, instead, head back to Phuket to further explore some of
the nice beach areas we drove through.
Even in the low season, Phuket still seems busy enough to keep
everything open, and there are a lot of things to do and see there. Plus, we have a special trip lined up for the
coming weekend in Phuket so we had to get back there sometime before then
anyway.
The road map that came with the rental car has served us
well as it has most of the smaller roads marked on it. The road system in Thailand is really many
steps beyond what you find in the surrounding countries and it has been a
breeze driving here. The only issue
we’ve had is with the signage. On the
main highways, they have huge overhead pictures of the nearby popular tourist
areas, with English names, the distance and direction to reach them. For the less well known sites, there are
still signs with English on the roadsides telling you the direction and
distance. But once you make the turn off
the main roads they really leave you hanging as all the signs are then in
Thai! So though you may know that a
fantastic temple is eight kilometers down a road, the signs that then lead you
through the other six turns you need to make to reach it are all in Thai, so it
does take a fair bit of patience and persistence to find places, and most of
the time you just need to keep stopping at roadside stalls to ask for
directions. It can be a little
frustrating, but it’s also a good way to come across other interesting sights
you don’t find on any tourist maps.
The road wound us through many of the tall, limestone
mountains and the scenery was stunning.
About halfway back, we saw one of those overhead signs for Phung Chang
cave so we took the exit and blew right by the actual entrance to the cave (all
Thai signs) and pulled over at a gas station a kilometer down the road to ask
for directions. We backtracked, found
the entrance, parked the car and walked down to what looked like a cave
entrance at the bottom of a gigantic, completely vertical mountain. There, we found the cave entrance but,
surprisingly, it was actually a river and there were small kayaks floating
there and a few guides standing around wearing headlamps. I asked one of them if we could take a boat
ride and he led me up to a different area we had missed on the way in that sold
tickets. We bought tickets and were each
issued headlamps, then walked back down to the cave and were loaded up on a
kayak, then a paddler jumped on the back and a guide jumped on the front and
off we floated into the depths of the mountain.
The cave river was fairly narrow, and we floated through as
the guide pointed out all sorts of interesting natural formations of animal
shapes in the rocks. There were several
elephants, a flamingo, jellyfish, tigers, human shapes and thousands of
stalactites and stalagmites. He also
pointed out these tiny bats, called bumblebee bats, which are the smallest bats
in the world and only occur in southwestern Thailand and parts of Myanmar, and
live only in small colonies in the deep recesses of caves. Looking up, we saw hundreds of regular sized
bats, most hanging from the cave ceiling, but some also flying around inside
the cave. I told Magnus to keep his
mouth closed, just in case.
We reached a point in the river where we were led off the
kayak, walked across a short bridge, then were loaded on bamboo rafts and the
paddler now became the puller and dragged us through chest high water further
into the cave, where we saw many more animal structures and interesting cave
features. For the final leg of the cave
journey, we got off the bamboo rafts and were able to walk through shallow
water deep into the cave - in fact the entire distance we travelled was nearly
a kilometer. The guide led us through to
the point in the cave passage where we could go no further, then had us turn
off our headlamps so we could experience total darkness. And it was dark…and a bit spooky. He turned his own lamp on and directed it to
the ceiling where there appeared a perfect white stone formation of an elephant
with a round, red eye – probably the most striking animal image in the cave.
With that, we ignited our headlamps once again and retraced
our steps back to the start of the cave, quite enthralled with what we had
experienced and happy that we had chosen this one particular cave to seek out,
as there are dozens, if not hundreds of caves in this province.
We were soon back on the island of Phuket and drove south through some rotten traffic in Phuket Town, but eventually made it to Kata Beach on the southwest area of the island where we had a hotel named Kata Chaba booked for three nights. We checked in, upgraded to a room with a kitchen and huge bed for a total cost of $40/night and went for a swim. Everything about this hotel was excellent – it was clean, charming, cozy, small, had great front desk staff, lovely pool and nicely landscaped grounds. In fact, Ana and I agreed that this was definitely the coziest place yet we have found during our trip.
We met a Russian couple with a young girl at the pool and the kids quickly engaged her in a game of “throw the ball” and they had a great time splashing around for an hour or two. To finish off the day, we went for a walk around the hotel, found a great little restaurant for a bargain priced meal, and even had free entertainment as we watched a couple older dudes getting loaded at the bar across the way and grinding it up with the ladyboy barkeep and some of his/her local girlfriends. We left just when things looked like they might be getting a bit too “red light” for the kids!
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