Cave Lodge

In the last post, I covered the food at Cave Lodge and the adventure of getting there, since it seemed necessary to explain why ordering oat porridge was just what I needed. (Yes, the whole diversion into those minibus rides was only to justify my ordering oatmeal for breakfast at a restaurant? Absurd! It was a fun yarn regardless.)
November 9 - 15, 2009

In the last post, I covered the food at Cave Lodge and the adventure of getting there, since it seemed necessary to explain why ordering oat porridge was just what I needed. (Yes, the whole diversion into those minibus rides was only to justify my ordering oatmeal for breakfast at a restaurant? Absurd! It was a fun yarn regardless.)

Now, here are the fun people we met and the things we did with them. Little did I know at the time how small a world it was - well after the fact did we learn that Katya, who will go on a cave adventure with us and then a kayaking trip as well shared that minibus ride from Chiang Mai to Pai and had been equally intimidated by the brashness of the Australians, and as unrewarded by the comeuppance of Elvis in the first hour. And the much nicer Australians we chatted with on our first night at Cave Lodge would later discover a photograph of us in Chiang Mai and write us a note, not knowing whether we'd ever find it and leaving no way for us to send them a reply. But now I'm getting out of order, and here are things in a more organized fashion.

Paul and Germaine, Australians

After we arrived and got settled in, we went up to the common area to order some supper. While we were sitting at dinner, we began eavesdropping (as do all good travellers) on the table adjacent to ours, where a trio of travellers were engaged in some ribald conversation. By and by we managed to introduce ourselves, and they offered us some of their vodka and orange juice, and we chatted late into the night before calling it quits for an 11pm bedtime. It's funny how early a late night becomes when it's dark by 6:30 every night. (Since this is a tropical location, there's no Daylight Saving Time and sunset falls between 5:30 and 6:30 every night, depending on the season.) These travellers were Paul and Germaine, and I think they said they were married, or maybe they just told us they like to tell people while traveling that they're on their honeymoon. Anyhow, Germaine is a loud, fun woman who's constantly saying outrageous things, especially to and about their Thai guide, Daeng, who is showing them around in the north. She's got an interesting background, having been born to Indian immigrants in Burma before moving with her family to Australia. Her grandparents (I think) in India were Roman Catholic, and despite being ethnic Indian, spoke English as a first language. Anyhow, when Ryan and I hired the artist in Chiang Mai to do a sketch for us, we left them a photograph (several), and apparently Paul and Germaine stopped by the same booth and saw the photo pinned to the wall. Somehow they convinced the artist to let them leave us a message, which I didn't even discover until weeks later while organizing things to leave Bangkok (and now you get an idea of how late I'm writing this blog post - in fact, we've left Bangkok by now and we're already in the deep south in Phuket. Take that, prompt blogging!)

Unfortunately, Paul and Germaine were heading on the next day, so we didn't get to join them or have them join us on any of our adventures. Undaunted, we attempted our first solo trek the next day, our first full day there. Ryan should have written about the disaster that was this trip - we tried to find several caves that were marked on the map, but managed not to do much more than hiking up some very steep hills in full sunlight and then getting back around dark. But I hope I kept Ryan's spirits up, because despite our failure to find the caves we were looking for, I had a good time and wasn't terribly disappointed. Anyhow, as we trudged (skipped?) back into town, some local guys waved us over and we decided to stop and chat. Our language barrier was terrible, but we could manage just enough Thai and they could speak English a bit better than that, and our conversation was superficial enough that it didn't really matter. We drank shots of the (most likely homemade) Thai whiskey that had already gotten them all drunk, and talked about where we're from (at which one fellow had to give various US President's names as explanation: "Bill Clinton," he began with, "Bush," he added. Feeling like they could use an update, I continued with "Obama," and this got a roar of approval), and whether we were friends with them (we were, over and over. The third drunk could say little more than "You my friend" and extend his hand for a handshake). Regardless of the absurdity of our conversation, we had a really good time, and Bum, the most English-proficient of the three, offered us a bunch of bananas to take with us, which we accepted. I tried to see if I had any of our stickers on me, but I didn't, and the more I looked for them, the more upset he got, thinking I was trying to pay him for the bananas. When I stopped patting my pockets, he became visibly relieved, and we waved and parted on good terms.

The Fellowship of Five: Kyle, Katya and Isabel (+ us)

Back at Cave Lodge, we met several newcomers: Kyle, a 23 year old international business major (I think he'd just graduated) and his mother Jane, an architect; Katya, a German woman, who had been on the same minibus ride with us to Pai (but had stayed there overnight). Her story was that of having spent 10 years wanting to visit Thailand and then finally just doing it. She has a fiancé living in Turkey. And Isabel (Isa), from Spain, currently using her unemployment benefit to visit Thailand. Ryan and I had been eyeing a particular guided cave expedition - to compensate for our failure of that day we figured a guide might be necessary, especially since the owner of Cave Lodge, an Australian caver who would be able to give us better directions was absent during our stay - but were dismayed that it required a minimum of 5 people, or fewer people could go but would have to buy out the remaining slots. Therefore, we were thrilled to be able to convince Kyle, Katya and Isa to join us the next day. I had no idea yet how few days most guests, including these three, would spend at Cave Lodge, and it was even Kyle's second or third day in Thailand out of a short two-week vacation, so I'm especially happy that they joined us. Anyhow, the next morning all five of us turned out for the cave trip, which Ryan's got covered again.

The Fellowship of Five

The next day at Cave Lodge (day 3, now) we talked the same group of three: Kyle, Katya and Isa, to go on the short kayaking trip through Tham Lod and then on down the Lang River for a total of 7 km. Maybe Ryan will describe the cave, but I'll say some things about this trip, since we were in separate kayaks anyhow.

Kayaking beyond Tham Lod

Our being five people meant that we needed two guides, so there were an odd number of people in assigned to 4 kayaks. Kyle had a movie camera, so he partnered with one of the guides who would do most of the paddling for him. Ryan wanted to take the solo kayak, and I volunteered to team up with Isa while Katya joined the other guide. These weren't normal kayaks that I know, but really they're more like inflatable rafts with seats. It took Isa and me a while before we figured out a good seating arrangement, but we eventually settled with me in the front and her in back. This gave me a good vantage point for seeing what's up ahead and steering through it. But before we arranged ourselves thus, Isa was in the front when we smacked into a low tangle of branches that almost knocked us out of the boat. Instead, the branches left a mess of leaves and twigs that took us a long time to clear out as we paddled along. The cave was smelly while we went through it, and other than being impressively large and barely getting pitch dark in the middle of it, it was short and uneventful, so that's the last I'll say about it.

"Smacked into a low tangle of branches"

We hit rapids numerous times, and sometimes we did okay and other times we did quite well. Occasionally we ran aground in the shallows and sometimes we got stuck on a jutting rock, but we never spilled out of the boat, and we generally enjoyed ourselves and felt like we'd done a pretty competent job. Of course, the others might not have agreed, since we weren't very fast and we were usually the last boat. The most exciting event was probably the first dam we went over, because I was up on my knees, and when the boat buckled on the water at the bottom of the dam, it tossed me backwards and threw my feet in the air above me, and all that would have been just silly fun except that Kyle was filming at the time so I know there's now a goofy movie of me immortalized on Youtube somewhere, no doubt. (Actually, we should have a copy of that because we traded photos and video after the adventures, so it's just a matter of time before I can get that clip posted.)

At the end of the trip, we went over a second dam (I was better prepared this time and there was no spectacle), and then as we approached the docking area, some small local boys playing in the river raced to pounce into the back of our boat and ride it in. After we were pulled ashore, they raced back out to wait for the next boat.

We loaded the boats on top of the sorng taao (a truck, really, with two benches in the back facing each other), and rode back to Cave Lodge.

Before kayaking...	…and after

We didn't include any of the other guests in any of our other Cave Lodge adventures, but we did meet several other travellers when we hiked back out to the exit of Tham Lod that night to view the swifts come in to roost.

Swifts and Bats, and meeting Graham and Ima

The evening "bird show," as it's advertised, is the return of hundreds of thousands of swifts flying into the cave at dusk to nest for the night. These particular swifts make nests similar to the swallows' nests in the south out of which birds' nest drink is made, but for whatever reason, the nests of the swifts are not harvested. We hiked about a kilometer or so from Cave Lodge to the exit of Tham Lod (taking the newly - that day - repaired bridge that connects to the path around the mountain, rather than having to take the more difficult path over the mountain to get to the other side of the cave) and stayed for about an hour while the birds flew in and the bats fly (invisibly, for what I could tell) out.

Kyle and his mother had returned to Chiang Mai that afternoon, so joining us were Katya and Isa, and some new lodgers, too: Graham (a Scot) and Ima (his Spanish girlfriend), a trio of Canadian boys (though one was Ukranian originally), a couple of other Scots (making them remark that not only were Scots in dominance at dinner that night, since one of the Canadians wasn't originally so, this was the highest concentration of Scots outside Glasgow that they knew of), and Kat, a girl who'd been living in Chiang Mai for the last couple years as a teacher.

At first we followed Isa's directions to the hiking trail, but when they failed us, we all picked out our own way of getting back up to the road from which we found the proper path. From there, it was an easy stroll to the cave exit, and we stayed and watched the birds for a long time.

The path to the bird show

There was never the total blackening of the sky that I'd hoped to see, but over the hour of dusk, the volume of birds flying into the cave was very impressive. At first, the birds began to circle, a few, then more joining them, and so on. Then, as they circled, several would decide to fly into the cave, and that's how the evening went, with a big whirlwind of birds flying around the cave exit with a few entering the cave with each pass. It's the cave exit, rather than entrance, only by merit of the direction of the river as it passes through the tunnel. Supposedly, bats are exiting the cave in as remarkable numbers while the birds are flying in, but I couldn't see them. The bats are much smaller, and I thought I could see shadows of many fast-flying things leaving the cave, but it also might have been just the other side of the whirlwind of birds.

The cave mouth smelled terrible - bat and bird droppings from so many creatures left an unpleasant odor that kept growing as the show went on. Isa had gotten some Tiger Balm from a trip into Sappong that morning, and she shared it around with us. A dab of Tiger Balm under each nostril did help disguise the smell of the droppings, but not quite enough, and not only was one aware that the nasty smell was still there, even if masked, but the dripping of rain-that-wasn't-rain from the ceiling of the cave could not be ignored, making expeditions into the cave to get a better look at the birds not only risky, but eventually foolhardy as well. Even well outside the cave, the evening wind blowing through the tunnel and the wind generated by the tornado of birds carried the intensely foul smell right to our noses.

It eventually became dark, and the Canadian (including the former Ukranian) guys lingered to explore a cave possibility with us, but when it turned out to be nothing we all wandered back to Cave Lodge by the light of our few headlamps. We lost the path several times, and the Canadians got distracted by a call to prayer or something* in the forestry headquarters on our way back, but we eventually made it back in time for supper.
*As we passed through the forestry lodge, which I think has a large tent city adjacent to it, there was a well-lit building in which many people were seated in the kneeling position, while a loudspeaker blared some musical chanting. I don't know if this is a mass prayer, or a dhamma lesson, or just the evening town news. I had the feeling it was something spiritual, though.

Ahmsin, Choco and Nampung

During our stay at Cave Lodge, we became familiar with the children of the staff as they played after school each evening. Ahmsin and Choco were cousins, a girl of 5 years and a boy of 3 or 4 years. Ahmsin was much more vocal and outgoing, and once she warmed up to me, she began to demand piggy back rides, airplane spins, and so on. Choco did whatever game Ahmsin suggested, although he didn't want to be picked up or carried like she did. We became acquainted when Ryan and I brought out our hoop and poi on the second night there.

We'd asked if we could turn on some music, and I found something that sounded interesting in their playlist (and it turned out to be very agreeable for spinning), and we spun hoop and poi for a while, then others of the staff and guests played around with them, too. Ahmsin didn't want to try the hoop, but she was apparently delighted that I was doing so, and the next day she brought out her own smaller hoop (just a plastic toy, but fun enough to play with). Even with my demonstration and encouragement (I could spin her tiny hoop around my neck, but it was too light to keep it up when spinning it on my body), she didn't try to hula hoop with it until near the end of the week. Her favorite game was to roll the hoop back and forth with me, often pretending to look away and then either catch the hoop at the last minute, or usually letting it roll right past her and then giggling as she ran to get it.

When Ahmsin wanted to start getting piggy back rides, she'd become comfortable talking Thai to me (she didn't really speak that much English - just what she picked up from travellers), she tugged my shirt one day and demanded nam long, nam long which from our elephant work we knew to mean "get down, get down." So I stooped down and she climbed up onto my back. Communication achieved.

Nam Lang

On our last full day at Cave Lodge (Saturday, 14 November), we decided to try to visit some of the local hill tribe villages. Now, this is an activity which is somewhat unclear in purpose to me, and I'm still not especially certain what I want from it, were I to go back and do it again. I'll take a brief moment to give the best analogy I can think of, which is camping and its role in appeasing our survivalist desires.

When we go camping, there are several schools of though I can imagine. 1) We want to experience living like pre-civilized people. This is either an attempt to connect with our history or to prove that even amidst modern conveniences, we are as much men (human) as were our forebears. In this manner, survivalists should eschew as many modern appliances as they can. A knife, perhaps some rope, a canteen, and my wits; that is all I need to survive. I could build a life for myself if everything around me were taken away. That's how I imagine the thinking goes with such folk. 2) We want to experience "roughing it" to show that we're not soft, but we don't reject modern implements of man. Tents, sleeping bags, water purification tablets, et cetera, are all fine, but propane stoves, pre-packaged meals, air mattresses and excessive use of electricity are shunned. 3) We want to test our bodies to their limits, and have no problem using technology to aid in that endeavor. These campers use lightweight titanium or carbonite implements. Their gear tends to be very expensive and is selected to allow the camper to travel the most distance into the most inaccessible places possible. 4) Scenery and nature are best experienced without the corruption of mankind. These campers just want to get away from civilization, but don't have any need to leave the benefits of civilization behind when they go. 5, 6, 7) I'm sure there are others. I'm getting distracted from my main point, though, which is that even something as basic as camping can be confused by the number of different philosophies that dictate the purpose of camping. Add people and culture to the mix, and you'll see how unsure I am about what to expect out of a visit to a hill tribe village.

Perhaps in the beginning of western tourism, up until about 15 years ago, a visit to a hill tribe village would have been very exciting. They would be surprised and excited to welcome a traveller. That traveller would be thrilled to find stumble upon an exotic culture, especially if the trek to get there was difficult. The exchange would be mutually pleasing and beneficial. Today, however, (some of) the hill tribes have been excessively commercialized. One can purchase a package tour from Chiang Mai or Pai to hike to a hill tribe village, share a meal with them, observe them at work making crafts and other saleable souvenirs (weaving is usually the prime example here), take some photos, see a primitive village, etc, and then depart that afternoon or sometimes the next day, if an overnight stay is arranged. Isa described her two experiences to us: In the first visit, she attended a tour to a Karen village. The Karen people are the ones who wear gold collars that stretch their collar bones down into their chests, giving the appearance of a very long neck. Not all the Karen villages do this, I think, but some do, and I think that all the remaining tribes who practice this have been commercialized now. I'd guess that those collars used to be pure gold, or pure gold alloy, but now I'd bet they're only gold painted or gold plated. Regardless, here's how she described her experience.

"We paid a fee to enter the village and then we could look around, and go watch them weaving or they would pose for a photo with us. I couldn't take any pictures because it felt very uncomfortable."

I can imagine what she felt: I would wonder whether the villagers were being exploited - that is, whether they had any say in their fate or not. In the context of a modern world, which has now encountered them, the neck collars doesn't really make sense, so I wonder if they are essentially being paid to deform their bodies, because that keeps them commercially viable. I don't have any problem with people mutilating their bodies, with tattoos, piercings, stretching their earlobes, and so on, but I've never heard of anyone not from a tribe like this choosing to compress their collar bones to stretch their necks longer. Maybe that's because it has to be initiated when one is very young, like Japanese foot-binding. If so, then the exploitation is even worse, because it's not just adult Karen people choosing a costume that makes them attractive to tourist dollars, but children for whom we can suppose that there is no clear understanding of the effects of this choice, either being too young to know better or, worse, having no choice at all in their participation. Either way, I don't know what I'd do during such a visit.

On the other hand, I am curious about different cultures, and a visit to a small village that gets few visitors can be a lot of fun on both sides. To put it in Ayn Rand's terms, it's a mutually agreeable exchange. (I also would not object to visiting a recreation Karen village, like a visit to colonial Williamsburg. In that example, the people working there are doing so of their own determination, can quit at any time, and are interested in the preservation of history for history's sake.)

So, not being entirely sure whether I wanted to visit a hill tribe village or not, and not even being sure what I'd do during such a visit (because any entertainment would be entirely the responsibility of the host, and I feel a little awkward showing up some where, declaring, "we are here now, entertain us"), we decided to hike to one of the more remote villages on our map. The hike should take about 3 hours, we were told, and we'd have to take a path that followed the Lang River (Nam Lang, where nam means water) and in fact crossed the river about 45 times. Of course, the village we were heading to is also accessible by road, but the road is windy and long, and only approachable from one direction (the other way is marked "4x4 only", and when they say that, they're not kidding). On the way out, Pat (one of the staff at Cave Lodge), offered to sell us a bamboo segment with sticky rice inside—something I'd seen being made in Chiang Mai at the 3 Kings Plaza night market and wanted to try. It turned out to be not only very delicious, but the best sticky rice in bamboo we've had this whole trip so far. Every other place we try it disappoints us in comparison to that first one. Doesn't that just happen?

It didn't help that we got a very late (11:30am) start, we didn't know exactly where to go at first, and the paths here are terrible to follow. We didn't get lost, but we lost the path, over and over again. Though things started out well, we lost the path somewhere around the 5th or 6th crossing, and began following a mother and calf water buffalo as they waded upstream. When we couldn't find a good place to navigate the brush along the river, the buffalo usually had a good idea to present. Of course, they weren't always concerned with low branches, and brambles didn't bother them much either. On occasion we followed too close and spooked them, causing them to race ahead until we caught up again, and eventually they took a steep path uphill that we weren't able to follow.

Buffalo crossing

After about 20 or so river crossings, we ran out of time and had to turn back, about a half hour past lunch. Our plan had been to take a machete with us and cut several pieces of fat bamboo to use as flotation devices, and ride the current back home. This was a terrible plan. First of all, we had no machete. We asked about one at Cave Lodge, and they had a blunt, rusty machete they could lend us, but it had no sheath and we'd have to sharpen it before we left. With no sheath, we couldn't guarantee its or our safety on the swim downstream to get home.

Our second idea was to take dry bags and inflate them, instead of using cut bamboo. Cave Lodge only had one dry bag for use, and it was small. Plus, we ended up with a bunch of stuff we wanted to keep dry (including our clothes, because our wash was taking about two days to dry properly, and we were scheduled to leave the next day as it was), so the dry bag was filled mostly with stuff, not air. The last problem was that the river wasn't nearly deep enough. To float, which was mostly possible with the single dry sack, for one person, our legs still dragged across the river bed, or worse was going into a section of rapids where there was a great risk of smacking knees, toes, or other submerged body parts into the plentiful rocks with no kind agenda.

In the end, we hiked, and sometimes floated, and sometimes swam home. We'd hiked upriver for 3 hours; the return took us two hours. We knew where to go better, we used the current to our advantage some, and returning usually takes less time than going out. When Ryan used the dry bag for floatation, I tried using some logs I found. When I used the dry bag, Ryan hiked along the bank with his superior walking stick. Finally we got home, had supper and packed to leave.

Hill tribe villages at last

We devised a plan for ourselves to rise early and hike to the nearby Karen village. I'd resisted hiking to that village before because I figured that it would already see its fair share of western travellers and I thought I wanted to visit a more remote location. However, having failed to get ourselves to a remote location, we were now limited in our options, and I still wanted to visit a hill tribe village (probably).

Once we made this plan, the circumstances changed. Now Pat, the staff member at Cave Lodge, offered us another option to accompany her on a tour of hill tribe villages she was leading the next day. We thought it over, and decided the plan was good, and she went to get permission to include us, since it was supposed to be a private tour. Alas, the couple that had commissioned the tour didn't want additional people, so we were back to our earlier plan of hiking to the Karen village on our own. This temporary deviation from our plan is important because of how things played out in the morning.

Upon waking early, we went to get our water and lunch for the hike and ran into Pat. Originally we were going to drive her to town and then join her on the tour, but now she had to get a ride with someone else. Therefore, her car was available during the morning and she asked us if we'd like to rent it from her. Again our plans changed to accommodate this new opportunity, and—perhaps against our good planning—we abandoned the steep hike and took the car. Rather than drive to the Karen village, we headed out to some other fairly remote villages.

We visited 3 or 4 "remote" villages. Sure, they were remote if you were walking, and with the bad condition of the road and lacking any real reason to go there, they probably don't see many visitors. However, they are on the road and they have their own perfectly fine vehicles, so it's not like we're visiting a small village days from anything. Of course, we didn't put that much effort into getting there, so I guess we can't really expect much in return. Overall, I was disappointed. For the most part, the villages looked like small villages anywhere; the people like rural folk anywhere. They weren't particularly pleased to see us, maybe because it was early in the morning and they do work during the day. We didn't have a guide or a translator to tell them how far we'd travelled to see them or what exploits we had on the way. They didn't have a tourism industry in place to handle visitors who just drop by unannounced at any time of day. We walked around and noted the sow and her sucklings, the dogs, the children out at play and the adults at work. They stared at us as we walked by and perhaps wondered what we wanted or why we were there. After about 20 minutes, we ate our breakfast by the car and drove on.

Hill Tribe Village

Each village we went to was less remote than the last, and the towns more developed. As things became more commercial, we were better received because we had money to pay for goods. That's an exchange both sides are more familiar with and our smattering of Thai language helped here. But by the end of the morning, I think I'd gotten my curiosity satisfied, if in a way I hadn't really hoped for. For now, at least, I no longer have an uncertain urge to stroll into a wild village, bringing toothy smiles and civilized trinkets to share, while being welcomed like a lost king treated to feasts and presents. That sounds fun, but I think it's just a fairy tale, so I'll just have to be satisfied with the reality I've got.

Rural Wat