#bronicaconquerstheworld

Dec 18 - Later Phuket! Off to Chiang Mai, few hour bus ride to the airport, flight at 7:20pm. Air Asia flight has ZERO legroom, unless you pay extra for the emergency rows with the extra legroom. At least it wasn’t a full flight so we were able to spread out a bit. Score! Short flight, less than two hours. Cheap cab to our hostel and a short exploring for pad Thai for Brent. Early night!

Dec 17 - Quiet day, hung out with some folks from USA, Britain, and kept it pretty chill. Flight tomorrow!

Dec 13 cont’d - Docked back at the dam, and had lunch and hung out at the Rajjaprabha dam park, did some exploring and wandering about before the bus ride back. Saw some super cute Street pups that were scared unfortunately, and a super preggo meow meow. Chilled at the hostel for a bit, and went to a local family owned Thai food place for dinner, sooooo good. Brent had the spiciest curry rice he’s had to date, and I had massaman curry soup which was also awesome. Loved the spot, forgot the name though! And you can see my poor heels, so raw and hurty! Worth it though, jungle trekking was the best. Dec 14 - off we go, hostel guy drove us up to the bus stop on his scooter (with attached side car thingy) and we bought our ticket to Phuket! 4-5 hour bus ride every hour. Seemed pretty sketchy to me, only half the seatbelts worked and passing trucks on a windy road is not so fun. But we made it Alive! Last pic is driving over the bridge into Phuket!

Dec 13 - Up too early, they turned the electricity off sometime in the night so no fan = no sleep for me = grumpy Monica. Up at 5:30am, not cool!! Cloudy morning, luckily we had no rain during our trip though. Went out after food and chill time to Pra Kie Peht Cave, nowhere near the trek of the previous day, but still cool. Thank goodness I could wear my flip flops!! Won’t be able to wear shoes for a week. Saw some smaller bats, and squeezed through a narrow opening on our butts that opened into a more spacious place that has the lake in it. With all our headlamps out you could see the outside light coming through! Apparently when it’s dryer season you can swim straight through to the lake, but as wet season just ended it’s too high and several meters to go through. Not today!

Dec 12 cont’d - Big day! Made it out of the jungle, back on the boat and took a slower route back to Smileys looking for wildlife. Pic 6 you can kind of see some far off birds, they’re toucans! Sorry I have a crap phone! For most of the caving too I was carrying my phone in my mouth hahaha in its waterproof case of course, but now there are teeth marks on my case. Worth it ! Saw the beautiful sunset, and had a lovely dinner back at the raft house. Had fish from the lake (so deep fried and over cooked) but had a good table meal with our other group mates. Early night!

Dec 12 cont’d - In the Cave! Lots of bats, very spacious and open at the beginning, still easy to navigate and see over the rocks, pretty flat at this spot. It was SO HARD to take photos though, all different brightnesses with assorted headlamps as the only light source. Giant creepy spiders everywhere, see the guy in pic 3???? With the headlamp on you’d see sparkles everywhere, all of them reflections off of spiders eyes 😳. Saw various frogs, toads, and some Cave fish! Our guide Teddy grabbed one of the shrimp/crickety things and fed them with it. He also grabbed my leg after pointing out a spider so that was a good scream too! Soooo much fun, trek was about 700-800 meters through the Cave. It got harder and harder to trek through, some super narrow spaces with very fast moving water, large rocks so footing is hard to do, and even spots where we had to use ropes to navigate over the water and down into pools super deep! Most of them were waist high but one I couldn’t touch the bottom and actually had to swim through! It still never felt too scary as the ceiling was still high up above. Pic 8 you can see a very happy Brent in delish Cave water having a blast. Sooo much fun! The only small part was the exit of the Cave, but everyone made it through with no issues! The only shitty part was my poor heels, rubbing in the plastic trek shoes. The guy at our hostel told us to wear socks in them, should have listened!

Here we go!!!

Dec 12 cont’d - We we’re in room B6 which kind of looks like bb which is what we call each other! Cute ya? 2pm after lunch we hopped back on the boat to go on our jungle trekking adventure. Luckily for us we’d been pre warned that we were going to be up to our necks in water at one point, so we wore suits and thank goodness for the jungle trekking shoes haha. So many other people had no idea and were wearing their runners or nice sneakers, and some basic sandals. Getting off the boat you land in 6 inches of muck, which pretty much was the whole walk haha. Trekked to the Nom Ta Lu Cave (means water through), stepping in mud, puddles, over tree roots, back and forth across the river/stream several times, stopping to wait for pokeys and monkey around. Saw the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in my life, that pic is barely zoomed in and he’s bigger than a spread hand. At the Cave exit we dropped off our clothes and belongings to not get wet, and trekked another km to the Cave entrance. Super weird hiking around in a bathing suit!! Nice big Cave entrance though, I was worried it would be a bit claustrophobicy.