When we arrive on Tuesday, we head over to the famous Chiang Dao caves (called Tham Chiang Dao, which sounds like "Tam Chang Dow" rhymes with "now"). To see the caves, you have to have a tour guide, which is fine by me since I have no experience spelunking and have seen The Descent (excellent horror movie if you haven't already seen it). At the entrance you "donate" 20 Baht per person for electricity (no donation = no tour, but it works out to only 70 cents Canadian per person.) Inside, a number of tour guides are waiting and ready for hire with their kerosene lamps.
Some of the rock formations, all natural, are pretty neat - a personal favourite is definitely "the Rooster"
"Dead Elephant" is pretty good too, though you can just kind of make out the belly and legs in this pic:
It's a tight squeeze in places....
...and in others it's pretty roomy.
Afterwards, we feed the fish on the grounds of the cave complex:
...and then head home to our little bungalow at the Nature Guest House. Originally, we plan to stay for only two nights, but on Day 17 and 18 Pierre is under the weather so we stick around for 3. It's the ideal place to be - we have our own bungalow, and there's next to no traffic. The hosts are friendly, the air is fresh and the restaurant is about 25 metres from our doorstep and they make all the meals from scratch.
Our bungalow:
On top of all that, there's a mountain just behind us visible from the yard (though this pic is not from the yard):
We hang out, read and watch "Russia Today" on our TV, a 24-hour English language news site from Russia on Russia. It's the only English programming on our TV worth watching, plus we figure it's good research for the Russia leg of our trip in 2009.
By day 19, Pierre is feeling better ("around 90%" by his estimate, which later proves to be incorrect) so we pack up and head off to Chiang Rai.
photo credits: P, P, P, D, P, P, D, D, D, P
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