Ban Tham Lod/Pai

Greetings!

So a bunch of friends from the program went to the beach this past week because we had so many days off school. It was last minute planning, and I wanted to hang with Kim so we thought about going back to Pai.  I'm glad I looked in Stephanie's Lonely Planet book for something else because I read about this awesome place only about an hour from Pai called Ban Tham Lod.
Same as the last post- everyone who is coming, you should go here.

 Here is a nice article in NYTimes that I just found. I had a similar experience as the author, so you can read this in addition to my take on the place.  click!

Not much in the main street of Soppong/Pang Mapha- the town we bussed in to.  Gotta get into the country.

Some History

This guy John from Australia is known as the 'unofficial expert' on caves in the area, according to my guidebook- and that is right!  He started backpacking in SE Asia in the late seventies, planning to stay for two months and has now lived in Thailand for 30 years.  I already read his whole book - so many incredible/crazy/scary stories!  I bought it to share, so you can read it too, or buy one when you go!

John lived with Lisu people in the hills, learned Thai, and married a Thai woman.  He and his wife started leading trekking tours out of Chiang Mai in the beginning, and then he started getting into caving.  What I like most about John is that he is not exploiting the community by squatting and making money off tourists that come to his (awesomely sustainably built bamboo and teak) lodge.  He has become part of the community and educates people on cave conservation.  Local guides lead bamboo rafting trips though the area's largest and very impressive cave, Tham Lod, which the area is named after.  The money that we pay goes directly to the community, so the people don't have to rely on selling opium.

The local people had not ventured into the caves very much before John because of bad spirits that reside there, so John was the first to discover a lot of ancient artifacts, and even a fascinating species of fish that has been featured in Planet Earth.    He told me about when the crew came and spent 3 days filming for 15 seconds of footage in caves with extremely bad air (he was not a fan).  Check it out N3rdz!  And he said 15 seconds, it's actually 49.  Cool.

In his memoirs, John chronicles some events that led up to and occurred during his 30 year stay near the Thai border.  Murder mysteries, scary caving accidents, drugs, fires, floods, and tales of the local culture fill the book for a quick and intense read.  I read most of it on one of the last days I stayed there... but on to what we did...

Kim and I arrived at night, had some yummy dinner and hung out in the common room.  We signed up for a trip the next day where we hiked around the area and went in 3 caves with a local guide Wat, John's ex wife's brother.  It was just Kim, a french guy, me and the guide, so it made for a really relaxing day in nature.  Except for the parts where we were squeezing through dark holes in the water.  Fun stuff.  It was gorgeous outside and we had a nice time hiking.  We only saw one other person, a local Lisu woman doing some farming.  I thought maybe we would see a dinosaur.  Wat climbed up a tree and picked papaya for us.  We had fried rice and banana muffins for lunch in a little shack somewhere along the trail and rested in the shade.  We had another rest in a shack a little later and I actually fell asleep.

Cage Lodge main room

Photos from JM

Photos from JM

Oh the caves were really cool too!  I have pictures because John Michelle (?) was some kind of a photographer.  He set up his tripod, we lit up the place with our 'torches', and he had the shutter open for 15 seconds or so for these shots.  I was standing behind the big column.  We also saw snakes, spiders, worms, and fungi!

It stood up like 1.5 feet on its belly!

The next day Kim and I got up at 5am to watch the sunrise on top of the mountain.  We hung out a chatted for a long time with a 27 year old girl from NY who quit her job in fashion and has been traveling around.

Cave Lodge - super cool

On the trek/hike

Love it.  Main room at Cave Lodge

Kim left that afternoon and I was sad to see her go!  She took a lot of great pictures- look out for them.

That evening I went to Tham Lod- the biggest cave with some other folks.  IT'S HUGE.  Definitely one of the most voluminous caves in the world if not the voluminousEST.  Haha.  We rafted through part of it with the local guides lighting the way with gas lanterns.  Big fish swam along our bamboo rafts and we got out a few times to explore other areas of the cave.  We also saw ancient coffins that were found there.  This cave anyone can do.  They have stairs and railings and informational signs posted around.  You just need to pay 300Baht for a raft and 150 for a guide and lantern.

Oh and afterwards at sunset at the exit to the cave you can watch 300,000 birds fly in!  Crazyyy!!
So many cool things here.  www.cavelodge.com

Look at more amazing photos!

Pai is cool- but I'm really glad we came to Pang Mapha.

...

The next day I actually did stop in Pai for a day/night and hung out with Kwan, a Thai student that we met last week, and her friend.  Kwan is sooo nice.  It was fun to actually hang out with a Thai person in Pai, instead of other backpackers, even though that can be fun too.  We climbed around on a waterfall, then we rode back to town on her friend's rented motorbike (3 of us!).  We stopped at a random Chinese village where there weren't many white people, and for the first time people asked to take pictures with me.  They said I was pretty.  I said they were pretty.  I also rode on this weird wooden swing ride thing.  I'll post a picture after Kwan tags me on facebook!  (They are obsessed with facebook here and take sooo many pictures).

We walked around the market street, ate a lot of street food (mini pancakes with eggs, fried potato on a stick, a noodle dish at a sit down place, ROTI, mango sticky rice, black sticky rice with sesame) and then had mojitos at a kindalame bar.  I learned some more Thai and it was good.  I stayed in a bungalow that we previously stayed in.  You had to walk across a neat bamboo bridge, past some garlic fields and up a hill to a beautiful mountain view of Pai.  It was also very frigid at night!  39 F at night, and probably high 80's during the day, so a big range.  The bamboo bungalow was cute, but there was also a cacophony of dogs howling and roosters crowing all. night. long.  It sounded like a war zone.  But I kind of liked it because I've stayed there twice.


That's all for now!  E-mail me and update me on your life!