February 27, 2015
Three caves and a dusky langer: An exhilarating day
It was just pure chance that I stumbled upon the private, secluded beach, a slight wrong turn having taken me to it, but it was absolutely the most perfect place to wild camp ever. There was nobody else around, there was space for the tent above the high tide line, there was a stunning, peaceful tranquility to this beach. Naturally with it being absolutely the most perfect place to wild camp ever I of course stumbled upon it at nine in the morning, rendering its wild camping potential somewhat irrelevant, but I thought it worth sticking around long enough for a swim and a sandwich.
As I was making my sandwich a stray dog, of which there were a very great many patrolling the beaches and streets of this part of Thailand, came over to me with hungry eyes. There were so many dogs that feeding them was out of the question with my current financial constraints, but this particular dog and his pitiful eyes had sauntered along at just the right time. The previous night some small ants had gained access to my tent and had paid special interest to a bag of coconut cream flavour coated peanuts, where they had congregated in considerable numbers. Frustrated to find them infiltrating my breakfast I had tried to flush them out with water, but that had just made the coating of the peanuts go soggy, which in turn the little ants had become stuck to. Now that my peanuts were no longer vegetarian I couldn't eat them, but I figured this dog would have no such quibbles, and so I started to toss them up into the air for him.
I named the dog Stardust. Actually I went through a whole list of names, starting with sensible options like Charles and Leonard, but it wasn't until I got to Stardust that the dog looked up, and in doing so selected his own stupid name. Stardust was great and was very good at catching the peanuts. We played a game in which we tried for him to catch ten in a row in his mouth as I threw them up. I think the highest we got was eight, sadly, but it nevertheless seemed like we were going to be best friends forever. But then I noticed that a piece of lettuce from my sandwich had somehow, and honestly I can't tell you how, got stuck to Stardust's fur just behind his ear. I'd been patting him so I thought he would have no problem with me touching him, but as I went to remove the offending piece of lettuce Stardust took a dislike and turned his head and bit me.
To be fair to Stardust he didn't really bite me. There was no blood. He didn't try to hurt me. It was just a nip. But I reacted with a characteristic outburst of rage and leapt to my feet, roaring. Stardust suddenly, and quite rightly, looked terribly afraid, and jumped off the bench where we were sitting and onto the beach. I grabbed my water bottle and jumped down myself, before pursuing the terrified mutt several hundred metres down the sand flinging water at him and screaming things like "how dare you" and "I fed you, you ungrateful bastard!"
Come to think of it, it was really a good thing that there was no one else on this beach.
I put this unsavoury little episode behind me and continued cycling on a wonderful road with no traffic at all that followed the coast along a beautiful and almost deserted bay. Beyond that I joined a marginally busier road at which time a big red bicycle lane began. This was some most fantastic cycling indeed. As I was admiring the magnificence of the bicycle lane two bicycles came along behind me, being ridden by two rather tired looking pirates, each of them with unbuttoned shirts exposing bare chests and big bushy beards. Boris and Antoine had cycled from their home country of France and looked like they could do with a rest, so we stopped for a coke and shared our stories. They were nice, but any chance of us continuing on together was soon extinguished at the thought of trying to keep up with their twenty kilometre an hour average speeds. No wonder they looked tired. I was much happier dawdling along on the bicycle lane taking in the scenery and doing my best to appreciate the perfect cycling, in between throwing myself into the sea every few minutes, and so post-coke we continued on our ways separately.
Later in the morning I reached a National Park where big limestone cliffs rose sharply out of the otherwise flat landscape. According to the signs there were three caves in the National Park and I went out to the first one, Kaeo cave, on a tiny little side road. There was absolutely nobody else around, it was really an untouched corner of Thailand, and I practically woke the ticket man up who was sitting in a booth guarding the end of the road. It cost 200 baht, four pound sterling, for a ticket. Being for the whole National Park it would get me into all three caves, so, after a bit of debate, I decided that I would make a day of it and go and see them despite the expense. This turned out to be one of my finer decisions in life.
To get to the entrance of this first cave involved a steep hike up the cliffside, an adventure in itself as I scrambled up over craggy rocks covered by heavy leaf-fall. I wondered what might be hiding under all the leaves, a concern that gained credibility when I saw a long green snake slither suddenly across my path. If the cave was halfway as exciting as the hike to get to it then the 200 baht ticket price was going to be justified. And it certainly looked as if it might be when I arrived at the entrance and was greeted by a twenty-foot ladder that I had to climb down just to get in. Getting to the foot of the ladder it felt good to be out of the heat of the day and into the cool of the cave, and I looked around and saw an impressive array of stalactites and stalagmites and interesting rock formations.
At first the cave did not appear to be very big, but I noticed an arrow pointing down into the darkness to one side, and shined my torch in that direction. It was just about possible to carefully shimmy down across the rocks and get down to where the arrow was pointing. The suggested route descended through a narrow opening and curved around, and then there was a section so narrow that I pretty much had to crawl through. The reward was to come out into a bigger cave, even more elaborately decorated with all those amazing natural columns and designs. It was pitch black now, except for the light from my torch, with which I caught sight of a bat sleeping on the ceiling just above my head. I photographed the bat using the flash on my camera, which I think it must have found pretty much annoying.
But there were still more arrows to be followed, leading even deeper into the mountain. I began to feel a little apprehensive and somewhat claustrophobic as I inched my way through more passageways. I had an urge to retreat back the way I came - I had no idea where these arrows were going, for how long, or how far - yet I could do nothing but follow them. They were hard for my torch to locate sometimes, just simple wooden signs pinned to rocks here and there, and I feared becoming lost in this maze of caves. There were also no handrails, no permanent lighting, this cave was breaking every health and safety rule in the book. All I had was my hand torch and the thought struck me that if I dropped it and lost it down one of the craggy rock faces I would be very much screwed. There was no one else here and I would be lost in complete darkness. This was genuinely a bit dangerous but it was also really, really exhilarating. In fact it was one of the most unexpectedly exciting and fun things that I had done in years. I continued on.
I arrived at the largest cavern yet, where now there was not even any solid flat ground, it was all mounds of big jagged boulders. It made me feel like I was in a Super Mario game, and I had to leap from one boulder to the next, and if I fell in between them I'd be falling for all of eternity. Some of the rock faces were extremely slippery too, something my five dollar shoes were not well designed for. This was crazy exciting now. I was so far from where I'd come in and I couldn't go back even if I wanted to, and the light from my torch was beginning to fade. I had been assuming that these arrows would eventually lead me to another exit and by now I was really hoping that they would.
And then, with some great relief, I saw a shaft of light emerging from above me. A final difficult and dangeous scramble up to get to it and I was finally free, returned to the land of light and fresh air and dazzled by the brightness of the sun. It had, without doubt, been the best cave I'd ever been to. And even on the hike back down I continued to flirt with danger as I spotted another snake, this one also spotting me and stopping to raise its head in my direction.
The next cave, Prayha Nakon, was a short bike ride and a strenuous kilometre-long trek away. It was slightly more touristy than the last, and was consequently much safer and came with wooden walkways and handrails. It also required no torch, because there was a big opening in the roof of the vast cave which allowed a band of light to shine down. The scale of the thing was most impressive and it looked beautiful because trees had grown inside it. One of Thailand's former kings had decided that nature wasn't enough though, and had had a small temple built inside it. It was a complete contrast from the dark scariness of the last cave, although possibly the very best thing about it was seeing the primates on the hike back which, an information board was keen to point out, were not monkeys but dusky langers.
Time was pressing on but there was just enough of it, even after stopping to fix a puncture en route, for me to make it out to the third and final cave, Sai. The hike up to this one was the steepest of the lot - these caves were really putting me, and my five dollar shoes, through our paces. Reaching the cave I was once again alone and like the first there was no lighting or other safety precautions. In many ways this cave was the most impressive of the lot, with incredible stalactites and columns and things that looked like chandeliers in some great grand palace. I also caught sight of some wooden arrows pointing somewhere, but with my torch light dimming and darkness soon to descend outside of the cave as well as in I thought it best not to investigate too fully, and left it there.
But still there was time for this epic day to see more excitement as I made it back down to my bicycle and watched dozens of monkeys clambering similarly down from the cliffs and across the beach. As I sat and watched them, thinking about how strange monkeys look walking on all fours, a South African expat pulled up on a motorcycle. He talked to me and was friendly enough, telling me about how he worked in China and trying to talk nice about it and extolling the virtues of the country, which involved repeatedly stressing that they now have modern toilets in Chengdu, before finally he could keep up the charade no longer and broke down and admitted "look, I f*cking hate the Chinese, eh?" In response I said not a word.
He also told me about a campsite nearby next to the beach which, at a cost of only 30 baht, was practically free, and so I went there. It was a beautiful place to end an extraordinary day. I reflected on it all as I lay on the beach under the stars. All the wildlife that I'd seen - dogs, bats, snakes, monkeys, dusky langers, French pirates, modern-toilet-appreciating-South Africans. The scenery had been stunning, the cycling fantastic. And then there was that cave, that most remarkable cave.
Today's ride: 48 km (30 miles)
Total: 37,968 km (23,578 miles)
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