This was our third day at the beach (fifth day in Thailand) and our second day with the motor scooters. Unfortunately Owen woke up with a fever and minor stomach ache and decided to rest at the hotel all day so he'd be 100% for our first big day of kiteboarding scheduled for the next day. The rest of us decided to ride down south again to about the same latitude we'd been to the previous day but a little bit inland to the Khao Sam Roi Yod National Park where there were supposed to be a lot of caves you could hike to, one of which had a temple built inside. We were not disappointed!
Arriving in the park we checked our map and decided to start with the cave which has the temple built inside. So we scooted over there and parked and found the trailhead, which, according to what I remember Martin (the cable park operator) saying, went over one hill then down to the beach again then up a second hill to the cave. There was an option to take a boat around the first hill, and therefore limit the hiking we had to do, but we decided to hike it because we're tough!
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| Looking south from the highest point on the first hill. The boat on the beach is where we could have gotten a ride to and avoided this hike! |
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| Looking out (east) into the gulf of Thailand from the summit of the first hike. |
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| Looking back north from the first summit. Just around that point is where we'd been the previous day. In fact, that's Monkey Island again on the far right. |
Once again I had the wrong footwear (flip flops) because actually when we had departed I had thought we were going to be kiteboarding this day. The wind was way up from previous days and that had been the excuse by the kiteboard instructors for why we hadn't done it up to now. So on this day I had actually convinced Owen to come with us as far as the KBA shop to try to make contact with Manu and see if we could be kiteboarding. Remember kiteboarding was our main goal for the trip and the reason we'd selected this location. And Owen was concerned that time was running out and we wouldn't get to do as much kiteboarding as we wanted. But this wasn't to be the day because there was no one at the KBA shop and when I phoned Manu it turned out he and his instructors were at Dolphin Bay (where we'd been the day before) doing something other than kiteboarding lessons (we never found out exactly what). But at that point Owen headed back to the hotel and Max and I decided to accompany Darcy and Eddie to the cave park, where we were now. But that's why I had the wrong footwear for hiking again.
After the summit above we had to go down to the beach then along the beach and back up a second hill/mountain to get to the cave which was our destination.
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| Heading up the second hill toward the cave. |
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| Resting. It's hot! It's humid! And it's pretty steep! |
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| Now we've made it to the lip of the cave and are starting down. Lots of other people are on this hike too. |
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| I spot something that looks like a cave (with a collapsed top, making it open to the sky above). This is where I think the temple will be. I can see Eddie and Darcy down below already taking pictures. |
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| Almost there. But I was fooled! That wasn't where the temple was. Once inside this first cave you had to go through a second passageway into another cave to find the actual temple. |
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| Here's the actual cave with the temple. Temple is on the right side of the picture, on a little mound. It was built in 1896 for a visit from "King #3" as Pete, our night bike tour guide referred to him. |
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| There were many stalactites and stalagmites in the cave and in some places they had grown together to form columns. |
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| This cave, too, was open to the sky above, and as a result had plants growing on its floor. |
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| As temples we saw went, this was pretty modest, though its location was unparalleled! |
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| The hole at the top of this cave. |
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| Cave interior. |
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| Behind the people in the picture above is the opening we'd come through from the other chamber to get here. |
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| We're about ready to head out. It was nice and cool and shady in the cave! |
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| The roof of the first chamber we'd passed through, as we were going back through it again on the way out. |
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| Some limestone "pools" formed, like the stalactites and stalagmites, when the water leaching through the limestone carries dissolved limestone with it and then evaporates, leaving the re-solidified limestone behind. |
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| Upon returning to the beach between the two hills we were delighted to be hailed by a hawker selling return boat trips for only half the price of the round trip. We jumped at it and didn't even have to feel bad about paying full price for only half the trip! We decided we're glad we did the hike on the way over but there was no need to repeat it. This way we got the best of both worlds, a hike and a short boat ride on the ocean. |
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| Maybe Max will join the Thai coast guard since I couldn't convince him to join the U.S. coast guard. |
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| The headlands on the left are the ones we'd had to hike over on our way in. |
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| This would be another good album cover shot if I looked more serious and had two eyes. |
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| We've rounded the headlands now, looking back. That summit is where we took the pictures on the way over. |
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| Back to terra firma. Check out the crazy props on those boats! Props to the props! |
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| Celebrating a successful expedition with a fresh pineapple smoothie (yum, delicious!) while Max prowls the souvenir stands. |
Time really flew each day while we were in Thailand and this day was no exception. Our plans to visit multiple caves evaporated as we realized it was pretty late in the day (I think about 3:00) already at this point. So we decided to head back north. On our way, taking a more direct inland highway rather than detouring out immediately to the coast road we'd been on the day before, we passed an open air market at an intersection and decided to stop for a look.
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| Checking out the market. So many different kinds of food! Cooked and raw. Veggies, fruit, fly-covered meat and fish. And clothes, jewelry, sunglasses, toiletries, kitchenware. In the US it would be called Target or Walmart. |
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| Many fruits and veggies we could not name, but some we recognized as the ingredients of some of the food we'd been eating during the preceeding days. |
Leaving the market, where we had indulged in a little bit of "stall food" (mostly satay of one sort or another) we were still hungry so were on the lookout for a nice place to stop on our way back to the hotel. Eventually we did jog back over to the coast and eventually Max spotted a nice little place where we got a table and some drinks and some food. It was really nice: quite casual, though clean and tasteful, and with a great soundtrack. Open air, (did we eat anywhere other than that first place in Bangkok which Darcy liked so much which wasn't? I don't think so in retrospect) and of course the view was unparalleled looking out across the beach at the bay.
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| All we were missing to make the experience complete was "Method". That was the nickname for Owen who had declared he had a method for playing Hearts in our previous game. The method turned out to be perfect randomness. Each time someone led a card he would check to see if he had that suit and if he did he chose one of his cards in that suit at random. If not he just chose one of his cards at random. Embarrassingly he was winning for most of the game (remember this is the game where we mistakenly played with a trump suit so I think that threw some of us off our game, or maybe that's an excuse) until he ate the queen once or twice near the end. He ended up finishing second after Eddie shot the moon, putting me over on points (we played to 75 instead of 100 points because it was late and we were tired. Otherwise I obviously would have come back to win it.) |
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| Guests asked to remove shoes for this restaurant, which was not the general rule in Thailand in my experience. Picture courtesy the Darcy/Eddie collection. |
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| So if Darcy's favorite restaurant was the first place in Bangkok then I think this was mine. |
Finally we headed back north toward the hotel.
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| A view south along Dolphin Bay from where we'd parked our bikes across the street from the restaurant above. |
When we got back to the hotel Owen, or "Method", who had spent the whole day there, was hungry so after freshening up he and I went out for dinner and discovered "Very Good" restaurant. Which was indeed very good! Even excellent! Happily it looks like he's feeling better and ready for our first day of kiteboarding tomorrow.
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| Very Good Method |
And finally we slept, with visions of kiteboards dancing in our heads.
