After having lunch and cleaning off as much of the dust as possible we set off in the wrong direction for the cave in search of a hot spring marked on the map that looked about 5km up the road. It turned out to be more like 25 and when we arrived (after plenty of encouragement from locals giving us directions) we were met with laughs and told “no, no hot spring”, this despite us seeing signs for it!
After wasting a lot of time on this trip out of the way we set off at a fast pace in the right direction. The roads here were much better, no wind, no gravel, no sand and there were some really good views over the valley we would be riding into for the end of the day. Things were going really smoothly until on a straight section of road a chicken made a kamikaze leap from the side of the road and stuck it’s neck right under Pete’s wheels! I narrowly missed its body and we stopped a short way down the road. Pete and the other guy we were riding with went back to asses the bird whilst I waited with the bikes. It turned out the stupid chicken wasn’t dead and was instead still flapping about; apparently Eamon was about to hit it with a brick when the owner came over from her house.
Instead of being annoyed and asking for compensation she just laughed and kicked the bird a bit before picking it up and walking off! After this the rest of the day wasn’t too dramatic though the scenery we passed through was. We ended up in the small village of Kong Lor which lends its name to the cave we had travelled so far to visit.
The next morning we were up early to visit the caves so that we would have time to make the 200km trip back to Tha Khaek to return our bikes. At the mouth of the cave we got on a narrow local wooden fishing boat and were motored through the cave. The whole cave is 7.5km long and contains a river which winds its way under a mountain. The height of the ceiling changed dramatically along the way from being low enough to touch to chambers up to 100m high. At certain sections we had to get off the boat and walk across strange beaches whilst the boat was carried up shallow rapid sections. After about 45 minutes we finally saw the daylight at the other side and emerged into a jungle area to an isolated village. After a short break here we returned through the cave (though this time we could ride out some of the rapids downstream) to collect our bikes.
The ride back was mostly uneventful apart from the gear situation on my bike getting worse and worse becoming almost impossible to shift down without stopping first. About halfway back Pete’s poor luck on the bikes struck again and a horrible black, orange and yellow bee landed on his leg and proceeded to sting him. On the way the route took us over the top of a steep mountain pass with a view point at the top that took our breath away.
We made it back to town with time to spare and so dropped our stuff off at the hotel (next door to where we had rented the bikes) and were about to go to the bus station to organise our coach to Vietnam. As I tried to start my bike it kept failing as it had been doing on and off for most of the trip. Just as I was getting ready to bump it the owner came over to give it go for me. Instantly he noticed the broken gear shifter and pointed it out to me. With my best acting I said “wow wasn’t it lucky I made it back before that happened”, either he bought my story or thought I was a massive idiot who had been riding it like that for the last 3 days without knowing! Anyway his response couldn’t have been better, he just pointed at another (less broken) bike and said I could take that one.
No comments:
Post a Comment