Flying Blind

  Phetchaburi, Thailand
Friday, February 6, 2009

Our arrival in Phetchaburi was less than exciting, which is only fitting for this less-than-exciting town.  We got off the bus, walked the 500m or so to the guesthouse recommended by LP, and were quickly able to secure a room.

Pet Fox

Upon leaving our room in search of food, we discovered that the owners of the guest house have a fox that they keep as a pet.  The poor little thing looked so unnatural with a collar around its neck.  It scampered around, afraid of its own shadow, trying to find hiding places.  I wanted to tell them that foxes weren't pets, but then I thought of all the monkeys, elephants and eagles we had already seen caged around Thailand and decided my input would be lost on them.

We found a nice little restaurant and walked around the town just long enough to realize that everything was closed, so we found an internet gaming cafe, where we stayed until they closed and we were thrown out.

Having only allotted one day to the caves and temples around town, we were quite keen to get out and get an early start so we could catch the bus to Hua Hin at a resonable time. Knowing that the town was vast but time short, Tony had even obtained a photocopied map the day before so he could map out our route to maximise temple time.

LP provided only a sketchy outline of the sights, so our first stop was the TAT office for a detailed brochure LP mentioned. When we finally found the TAT, the woman in the office told us, "no English."  When we asked for something in Thai with pictures, we were given the standard Thai response, "no have."  With no brochure to guide us and no idea of what the temples look like or where they were exactly, we set off to the closest temple we could find.

A Cheeky Monkey

After a short hike up to the entry gate past hoards of playful monkeys, we walked away refusing to pay the highly inflated tourist price, too tired of hearing "mai dai" to try and argue with our work permits.

A bit frustrated, we started a somewhat aimless walk across town to find one of the better known temples, Tony having given up on the full tour when we couldn't get the info, much to my relief.

We eventually found Wat Mahathat (creative name, I know), a rather unimpressive little temple, crawling with soldiers apparently trying to set up for some sort of show.  Feeling somewhat in the way, we quickly made our exit.

Part of our original plan had been to rent bicycles and cyle the 4km out to the cave temples (the main tourist draw in town), but having discovered that a one-day rental would set us back a steep 150B each, we decided to find alternative means for getting there.

We managed to find the local "bus" stand with some help and were quickly herded into the back of a pick-up truck.  At some point, the truck stopped and the driver told us to get out.  We asked where we were and where the cave was, and he just pointed up an abandoned road.  After a rather confusing game of charades, we were still none the wiser, but decided to cut our losses and start up the path.  After a little walking and a lot of swearing, we came across the cave, Khao Luang.

A Tree Growing in the Cave

For those of you who have seen the Bangkok Dangerous remake, you might remember this cave from the film.  For those of you who haven't, don't bother - it's a crap film.  Khao Luang is a large cave with a random smattering of Buddha images.  Two interesting things were a tree growing up the side of one of the rooms and a statue of a man with all of his innards hanging out.

Back on the main road again, Tony managed to get a tuk-tuk driver who was willing to take us to Khao Bandai-It, the second cave temple, and bring us back all for 80B.  At the time we thought this was a bit steep, but once we had seen how far out it was, we happily paid it.

Once at the cave, we made our way past the resident monkey guard and inside.  Here, we had a couple of women start following us and pointing things out in broken English.  Having learned our lesson in Kanchanaburi with our non-Englsih speaking "guide", we quickly dismissed their services and continued on ourselves.

Cave Temple

The cave temple itself is pretty run-of-the-mill, but it has a little hole in the top of one of the rooms, that if you catch it at the right time of day, allows a beam of light through that makes for a pretty impressive sight.  We, of course, only know this from what we have seen on the internet.  Due to an unsurprising lack of information, we were not there at the right time and did not see it in all its glory.

After trying to imagine how cool it might have looked, we found our tuk-tuk and made our way back to town, where we got lunch before boarding the local bus to Hua Hin.


****NOTE****   (5 March 2009)
Tony and I have finished Thailand and are leaving for Cambodia tomorrow.  I am trying to get the blog up to date as quickly as possible but finding the time is proving difficult.  The remaining entries from Thailand will be available soon!