Rockclimbing, Spalunking, Adventure.

Aug 28
So tired .

We went rock climbing today (adventure Friday!) . The place was a lime stone buttress rising out of a mountainside bamboo jungle. We took four taxi Rut Dang, (red pick up trucks, with benches in back and hoods over them) up the mountain side.

Climbing was super fun. They had us do this mixing excersize at the beginning, that was a bit awkward. It was to try to make us feel more comfortable making mistakes, and loosen up and have a good time. It worked a bit, although giving ourselves a hand was still a bit funny.

There were six climbing ropes, laid down this cliff that just roared up out of the jungle. As they were explaining instructions we heard monkeys running through the trees behind us. (didn’t see). I climbed four of the six, before we went. The”chiminy” was the first one I climbed, and it was the hardest, when I was standing at the bottom I didn’t think that I would be able to do it. It was a crack between parallel slabs of stone, and you had to lean against both sides. It didn’t take a lot of strength, but creativity, form and attentiveness to find the right tiny ledges and hand holds. I was super proud to finish. From the top you could just see the mountains on the other side of the valley. Another I did looked easy, but was tricky to get going on. I had to rely on the advice of my bellayer (who had seen other people do it) so I swing around and grab for a tiny hand hold as I moved. There was a good lesson in the climbs for handling our time in Thailand.

We ate lunch on these raised platforms with grass roof. My Mae packed me a cute little lunch with a juice box, sandwitch and dried durian chips (yum yum), also a bag of Lang Dang (the sweet jelly yummy fruit) which I shared with my Rut Dang (mini-bus taxi) on the way back later.

We went caving in the afternoon. We each had a card and we read/told the group about what was on our card, so it was interactive lecture, not just one person talking. There were pretty bamboo gates/arches at the entrance to the cave. There were giant ‘snot like’ formations of flow stone, tiny ten year old soda straws, sweeping caverns, and small smaces to slip through. No cave went back far but we explored several. Some had buddah statues because monks could come and mediate there. We asked about bats, ur guide told us there were not many bats because the locals liked to eat grilled bat. These pretty bamboo structure were actuall frames to hang micronet over the cave mouth. The bats got trapped in the micronet and the locals grilled them on sticks. The problem was the insects of the cave eat bat guano to stay alive. The animals that ventured in to eat insects didn’t come in anymore. With the bats gone, the cave died.

We did a tiny rapel, and it started to pour rain part way through. Huddling and grinning under our colorful rainjackets we hurried back up the steep mountain to another gave. We felt bad for the other group, which were climbing in the afternoon. Surly, they couldn’t climb on the wet stone.

We went into another cave and passed through some winding passages, the suddenly up a 4 meter ledge we saw ropes and other students. We had arrived at the best part of the day. We climbed up the ledge (hooked into a line) and they immediately hooked us into another because we were sitting on a ledge overlooking a massive, gaint, huge, cave. A open corner at the top spilled sunlight into the cathedral chamber. There was flow stone, and porous pockmarked rock everywhere. We were on a tiny ledge, and from where we were tied in we couldn’t see the bottom. There were voices jingling up from way down below. There was a zip line rope stretched between our ledge and the wall on the other side of the cavern (bottomless pit)!!!! One by one we slid and then pulled ourselves, hand over hand across the line, then we free repelled straight down all the way to the cave floor. It was unbelievable. It was so so so so scarry when we were sitting waiting on the ledge and couldn’t see the bottom. Once we were hooked in, it was super fun. Pi pee our guide told us the ropes and caribeners ext were equipt to hold several tons each, and we were double hooked in on everything, two lines, ext. we would slide down half way then turn around and pull ourselves the rest of the way. It was actually pretty tough to pull ourselves up, and right when I realized it was hard it got scary again, for a moment, because I went from being a passive recipient of my situation (hanging over an abyss) to actively being responsible for getting across. Whew!

The voices down below, were the other group, which had come inside and were climbing in the cave!!!

That night Rew Lep and I played zombie. We turned out thelights and Rew would try to grab/bite/tickle us. It was so fun. Lep was schrieking in laughter. I would used the flash of my camera to ‘bliind’ the zombie and get him to let go. Eventually Rew turned the lights on and used a red blanket to wrap up in a certain way so his arms were in pockets, he held them, palms together over his heat, elbows bent, and he became this scary, amazingly convincing, red blanket creature. It had a wiggly pink snout made from the rolled end of blanket. He would crawl run across the room towards oru voices, and we would try to get away. Picture didn’t come out, I’ll have to draw what the creature looked like some time.

When I got tired of this / felt rew was getting a bit too rough, I taught them to play set. It was so fun to try to teach with no words. I had to figure out what strategies worked and didn’t Rew got frustrated mai khaw jai! I don’t understand. Eventually I would take two cards and start a set and have them look for the third. They liked this a lot and got really into it. Khaw Jai! Exclaimed Rew at one point, and he did.