Caves

Some friends (Stephanie, Kaitie, Alicia, Randy, Matt, Justin, Dana, Lexie, Emma, Laura) and I traveled to Chiang Dao on Thursday. The purpose of this excursion was to explore caves! In order to get to Chiang Dao, we took a 2-hour bus ride. It was relaxing to roll down the window, listen to my iPod, and look at the scenery along the way. I was surprised to see that as the bus picked up travelers at each stop, the driver would merely slow down--this means that these people literally had to run to get on the bus!

So, about the caves...
There were many Thais and tourists there, most likely because of the Buddhist shrines inside. Different worship areas were set throughout the caves, and people would light candles and pray at each. Our group seemed to be the most adventurous of all the visitors, because we were the only ones to wander deep into the caves. We chose to stray from the path and explore. Luckily, most of the group brought flashlights, because soon after we wandered, it was completely dark. We climbed over rocks, under rocks, and crouched through crevices. Some of us were slightly injured along the way, but that was soon forgotten because of the cave's unbelievably breathtaking beauty. There were amazing rock formations throughout the caverns, and bats! Lots of them! Towards the end of our venturing, we discovered a pool of water. It appeared to be very shallow, but as we peered around, we discovered that it curved and dropped to about 40 feet deep! Throughout this entire exploration, we kept relating our experience to different movies--The Goonies, Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, etc. I kept expecting to stumble upon skeletons or buried treasure!