1,245 steps later.....

Trip Start Feb 11, 2008
1
57
58
Trip End Jun 30, 2008


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Where I stayed
Greenway
(Krabi hotels)

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Monday, June 16, 2008

We stayed at the Greenway hotel in Krabi, a nice, clean hotel on the main road through the town, but it was very quiet and the staff were very helpful and welcoming. We had originally decided to take a look at the beaches around the Trang district like Riling beach and maybe stay in a bungalow resort for a few days, catch some sun and swim in the sea, but when we arrived in Krabi we decided to stay in town and expolore the area from there as we'd secured a cracking room in a clean hotel and, besides, we'd only just had a "beach" holiday in Palau Perhentian the week before. I had read about the local Buddhist temple and some 3000 year old wall paintings in a sea cave which I persuaded Jo we should visit. The weather was a lot hotter than in Penang and Palau, so where ever we went we were drenched in sweat, so with that in mind, we thought we'd climb 1,214 steps in the blistering mid day heat to the top of a limestone outcrop and take a look at the Buddhist temple just outside of town- called the Tiger Temple, not because there were tigers there, but because the rock upon which stands the golden Buddha looks like a tigers head (apparently you have to be slightly pissed and look at the rock with squinted eyes to get the full effect, a bit like those 3D posters that were all the rage in the early 90's where people would spend hours staring at them with crossed eyes claiming they could see a shipwreck, or an image of Jesus, or something!)
 
Anyway, 1,214 long, steep, dehydrating and bloody knackering steps later and we were stood running with sweat, red faced and close to death gazing at a huge image of a meditating Buddha with a very welcome breeze blowing through our sweat soaked clothing. The view was pretty impressive with the sea in the distance and various limestone outcrops draped in liana vines and shrubs poking up through the landscape like claws. The only thing to really spoil the view of the temple and the surrounding countryside were the red and white striped mobile phone radio masts attached to the roof of the temple itself and sticking straight out of the top of some of the more beautiful hills. It wasn't until afterwards, when we'd climbed back down the 1,214 irregularly cut steps with shaking legs and made our way back to the cool air conditioned sanctuary of our hotel room that I realised from reading in our guidebook that we'd missed most of the rest of the temple compound; including a series of caves (located at ground level) in which the monks and nuns spend time in meditation and you can see photos of cadavers which are meant to prevent you from thinking indecent, sexual and immoral thoughts whilst you meditate. As well as this we could have saved ourselves the arduous climb and also visited the oldest standing tree in southern Thailand. Still, never mind, eh?
 
The following day we booked ourselves on a sea kayaking trip to visit some sea caves on the coast. Luckily the weather had clouded over in the night so the sun was not as vicious. The trip cost 1200 baht each, but it turned out that it was worth the cash as the trip was excellent and included one of the best meals we had enjoyed in Thailand so no complaints there! We were joined by Dan and Laura, a couple from Bristol, of all places, who were great fun and our guide who was excellent and pointed out interesting rock formations, caves, sea crabs, different flora and fauna and was very informative. The first couple of caves we visited were superb and as it was high tide we had to paddle through the low, narrow cave entrances in single file through the darkness, guided by torchlight. The caves went through the cliffs into mangrove swamp lagoons on the other side, so this was very impressive in itself. Our guide pointed out rock fish to us and if I'd not seen them with my own eyes I'd never have believed them. The fish (for that's what they were) were sat on  top of rocks sticking out of the water and moved on land on their over large fins like seals pushing themselves along and jumping into the water where they'd skim along the top out of reach.
 
The last cave of the day was the one I'd been looking forward to most as this held cave paintings which had been dated over 3000 years old, but I had my doubts about the authenticity of some of the rock paintings which were located nearer the ground. Unlike the probably original paintings on the cave ceiling at least 15 to 20 feet above our heads, these were accessible from the cave floor and consisted of human like figures with large alien like heads, scrawlings which looked like boats, or possibly cone shaped or UFO's and unidentifiable animal-like images. Maybe they were 3000 year old Neolithic cave art, but I had my issues as I suspect that once the locals realised the cash incentive of showing tourists the "original" cave paintings they'd either "improved" original paintings or highlighted faded paintings themselves by colouring them (which is bad enough) or even imaginatively recreated their own paintings in order to entertain the tourists who flock to this particular cave in order to gaze upon the cave art. In fact, when we arrived there was a party of Malaysian holiday makers scrambling irreverently about the cave, shrieking in their childlike way and taking photos of each other or playing their particular style of Asian pop music on the loudspeakers of their mobile phones. Needless to say, I waited until they'd buggered off before making my own exploration of the cave. Each to his own!
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