 | After sitting around all afternoon and evening at Cave Lodge, I was itching to get out. The lodge organizes different trips if there is enough interest. Best of both worlds: Kayaking and Caves. My camera isn't waterproof so all the pictures are thanks so Gidi. The token guy of the group. The girls were: Elphia, Cheo and Leng, all teachers from Singapore. |
| Here's Gidi, he's an electrical engineer from Israel who has a four month trip. He started in India, then Nepal, Sri Lanka and finishing in Thailand. It is near impossible to find boring people in this part of the world. |  |
 | Don't blame this uninspiring picture on Gidi, it's all mine from a later day. Part of the kayak trip is through Tham Lod which I understand means Cave Through. They're not often tricky with their naming if you can translate. This is the enterance that is lined with bamboo rafts to take tourists into the cave. The guides give us lights but they're not very strong and at the beginning it is so big and dark you can lose sense of up/down and the sides of the cave. |
| After wandering around Thad Lod we hiked a little over to Hair Cave. So named because of some hairlike formations. Again, not tricky. We're following Elphia down here. |  |
 | Big scary cave spider! |
| After the caves, there was lots of paddling and rapids. Everyone got hung up to varying degrees. The most impressive/difficult stuck style was when your raft was wrapped around a rock with the flowing water. However, everyone came through just fine and the highlight was sliding down the cement dams. |  |
 | Back to my pictures, the girls all were done around 2 and Gidi continued down the river with one of the guides. We were famished and a bit waterlogged. After a quick shower and change, we gathered together and headed down to get some food from the vendors by the enterance of Tham Lod. This was one of the best meals I've had between the company and the different dishes that we got and shared. There was grilled chicken, papaya salad, curry, glutenous rice (extra gluten, yay!), pad thai and some fried noodles I think. |
| We headed back to the lodge to relax a bit before heading back to the cave to watch the swifts. At dusk thousands of swifts decend on Tham Lod and it's quite a show. |  |
 | That night was the ping pong tournament which I didn't participate in but I got quite a kick out of watching the girls and the young lad from Ireland go at it. Even more entertaining was the close calls when the ping pong ball almost went into the fire or under the deck. There were several delays due to a lost ping pong ball. It was lovely spending time with Elphia, Cheo and Leng but they're off to Chiang Mai and I'm off for Chiang Rai... Or am I? |
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