January 10, 2015
Thailand's Grand Canyon: It's not what you think
The next morning I rejoined Karin and Patrick and we cycled south together for about ten kilometres, before turning left on a road down to the Mekong to visit an area named 'Sam Phan Bok' that had been described to us as 'Thailand's Grand Canyon.' The previous day we had seen a billboard for it, and it looked quite interesting on those, and so we thought we should definitely check it out. And that proved to be an excellent decision once we arrived and looked out over the very impressive sight of Thailand's Grand Canyon.
It wasn't immediately obvious to any of us why it was known as Thailand's Grand Canyon, because it bore no resemblance whatsoever to Arizona's Grand Canyon, but it was wonderful all the same. We ran down to it; a large area of land next to the Mekong that was covered in rocks of all shapes and sizes, mixed in with lots of pools of fresh-looking water. Not having had the benefit of a shower at my campsite I ran off to find a good one for a swim while Karin and Patrick had a look around and took some photos. When we reconvened they said that they had to leave, because they wanted to cycle 90 kilometres to Kong Chiam, where the next nearest guesthouse was. I wanted to stay here longer, I'd only just started exploring, and now I didn't have any real time schedules there was no way I was going to cycle 90 kilomtres, so we went our separate ways. 'Silly people' I thought, 'what kind of a fool would rush through such long distances during a bike tour!?'
It turned out to be to their mistake, because as I walked further downstream, to an area that they had missed, things became considerably more spectacular. 'Sam Phan Bok' means 'Three Thousand Holes' and it was easier to see how the place got this name than its Grand Canyon pseudonym. I was now walking across rock that was dotted with thousands of sinkholes of a wide variety of sizes, somehow drilled out by mechanism and movements of water that went beyond anything my GCSE geography could fathom. It was a really incredible sight, and terrible fun to hop and skip between the holes and over the rocky terrain. It was like a playground for me. I loved this place. And there was almost nobody else there. This was no National Park, and it clearly hadn't made it onto the Lonely Planet crowd radar yet. For this morning this playground was all mine.
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Then I found a big sinkhole filled with clear water that was perfect for swimming. I dived in. The water was warm but refreshing, and there were circles of rock carved in the side that made an ideal ladder. It was the perfect swimming hole. Literally. I decided this was one of my absolute favourite places of the whole trip as I floated on my back with my arms spread out in the middle of the water.
After the morning excitement the rest of my day was fairly uneventful as I cycled under a hot sun. I had entered a more remote corner of Thailand now, with fewer people and more natural woodland, and a couple of steep climbs in there too. It was great cycling, but the sun made the climbs a killer, and I sweated buckets in the tropical heat. At the top of one climb I found a small settlement, and a woman outside with a stall where she was making a variety of iced drinks. There were lots of young children around sipping these drinks up through straws and they shouted greetings to me, reflecting the happy and safe atmosphere of this place. I noticed there was also a shaded hut next to the drink stall. I didn't need to think very long about this one.
I sat on the platform under the shade of the thatched roof and sipped happily on the ice cold chocolate shake. In front of me village life was in full swing, in the rather laboured typical Thai way. The young children hadn't quite known how to follow up their enthusiastic 'hello's once I stopped, and had lost interest in me, and went back to sipping their drinks. A guy on a motorcycle arrived, dropped someone off, picked someone up, dodged the young chicks that ran around tweeting as they followed their mothers digging and scraping around for insects on the dry ground. Some puppies ran around happily. An old man sat in the shade with me, and then a couple of old women. The man tried to make conversation with me, but nobody had the energy for that, it was too hot. One of the girls, about twelve-years-old, maybe younger, leaned casually on a parked motorcycle. Her movements were careless, clumsy, the motorbike rocked on its stand, for a moment I thought it would fall as she sprawled in that carefree, childish way. I wanted to tell her to be careful. She came so close to knocking the whole bike on its side, I wondered why none of the adults told her off. Told her not to be so silly, to be aware of the dangers of playing with adult toys. But none of them said anything.
Then a younger child ran over, and was helped onto the back of the motorcycle, and the twelve-year-old climbed on the front, and kicked the bike into gear and sped off in a cloud of dust. Things work differently here.
Today's ride: 60 km (37 miles)
Total: 35,652 km (22,140 miles)
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