Nina's Place: 11/6/11

Renee & Damien had taken the kids through this cave a few months back & asked me if I wanted to go. Well, I happen to love caverns & caves. We've been to the Carlsbad Caverns twice, and have visited other smaller but really nice caverns in the Ozarks & a smaller cave in TN.

Little did I know.... The Thai cave experience was nothing like my US cave experiences.

We paid our 20 baht entry fee, then 100 more inside for the tour guide with the lantern. (Hmm. Why did we have to pay twice??) Lantern = MUST HAVE since the part we were going through had no lights at all. Total, pitch darkness. And no paved path.

I brought my Nikon in my small but hard, bulky camera backpack, but that was a MISTAKE for two reasons. #1 - 250% humidity inside the caves, and #2 - it added greatly to my difficulty maneuvering through some of the tight spots, which was already a super challenge for my bulky, middle-aged, un-lithely self.

Challenge #1 Those tight spots were almost my undoing. We had to bend, duck, kneel, etc to fit through them to get from one chamber to another. By the 4th one I went into panic attack mode and was about to say go ahead without me..... but then I remembered if I didn't go on I would either have to wait in the pitch darkness by myself, or ruin everyone else's fun. So, I took two deep breaths, composed myself, and squeezed through. (In the middle of it I almost stopped breathing at all when the thought of an earthquake happening right then, burying us alive, entered my mind.)

Challenge #2 The Giant Brown Spiders on the walls and rocks throughout the caves. I never did ask if they would bite or if they were poisonous - I was afraid of them no matter. They made Challenge #1 even more challenging because now I was afraid of one of the monster spiders getting on me in the tight spots or when I had to put my hand on a rock or wall to steady myself when going down a slippery slope or tricky area.

Challenge #3 We got to the end of the tour (thank you Lord!) about 20 minutes later, which was a place of a drop off of 30 meters into the blackness.. No rail, no warning signs, nothing. Just the tour guide stopping us about 30' from the wide edge, telling us that we could go no farther. I wondered if they let people get closer who don't have little kids with them, and also how many skeletons were down at the bottom.

Challenge #4 The Staircase From (or to?) Hell: At first I was extremely relieved that we would be taking some "stairs" instead of going back through the tight spots we had come through, but this wet, steep, twisting staircase with drop offs was the most incredibly scary descent ever. It had steep, deep, uneven "steps" made of rock and handrails that ended way too soon, or not at all where there should have been one. I wondered if we were being led down into the bottomless pit itself. Certainly 1 misstep would have plunged us to the bottom without stopping. It was terrifying, but I reminded myself that I would choose this over being buried alive in the tight spaces, so I carried on. Remember, everything beyond the guide's lantern was sheer blackness. They should seriously use this staircase in a horror movie.

Challenge #5 The Bat Cave. No sooner had we reached the bottom of the hellish staircase then we rounded a corner and the guide held her lantern up for us to look at the ceiling. There in that next chamber hanging from the ceiling were about 2,000 small black bats. At least they thankfully LOOKED small. Who knows? Maybe they were really father away than they looked & were really giant bats, like the spiders were giant? Whatever, all I could think was "NO BODY MAKE ANY NOISE & SPOOK THEM!" please, and "rabies city."

We stood admiring the bats a few seconds more than I wanted then continued our journey. We reached the end, tipped our guide, then headed down a lighted more gentle path through more caverns. (NOW I find out that this is what your original 20 baht gets you. But who wants to do THAT? No excitement there, except for more of the spiders.)

I was totally drenched by now, from humidity, dripping water, exercise, and anxiety. It was just another excursion to everyone else in our party.

Truly, all the challenges & joking aside, the Chiang Dao Cave was really awesome and there were some pretty neat formations (lots of elephants not surprisingly) and alters throughout, and I'm really glad we did it!

I only braved taking out my camera a couple of times in the primitive part of the tour, but after the first couple the pics are from the easier, lighted part. Following the cave pictures are some of the grounds outside the cave entrance. The Chiang Dao Cave is located at a holy sight with a temple, a pond with sacred fish, and a thousands year old ruins. (I still need to add those pictures of the grounds.)