Miloping

Maybe I was wrong, I think we actually went on the elephant ride on Thursday, but hopefully no one noticed. Anyway on Friday we went canoeing in the caves around Phuket. The mornning started being picked up from the hotel at around 9am. While our hotel is nice and quiet it is a long way away from anything in the surrounding countryside. When we arrived we were taken by boat out to the islands. We were then sat into canoes with a driver behind each couple. The tour consisted of about 10 young couples, mostly from Australia. The first cave we went through was the oyster cave, named in this way because the walls and ceiling were encrusted with oysters, this was possible because at high tide the cave is completely submerged. We had to lie down to get through the cave, there was only about a single metres clearance between the cave roof and the ocean. The cave was really just a hole in the side of a mountain sticking out of the ocean and the canoes had to travel over choppy ocean water to get there. Once through the caves we emerged into a lagoon right in the centre of the mountain. Trees surrounded us on all sides clinging to the rock sides and creating a pleasant canapy over the canoes. The second cave was aclled the bat cave, named thus because it was full to tiny 3 inch long bats. I must say though that the cave really stank but the site of all the hanging rocks and bats was well worth it. Beyond that cave was another lagoon, this one much bigger, it must have been about 200 metres long and full of trees with huge roots sticking out of the water. Around the base of the trees mud skippers darted here and there. It was an amazing sight. One of the canoe drivers caught a crab that must have been about a foot long, and everyone thought that was awesome.

After this second cave we were served a buffet lunch to thai food and like all the Thai food we have been getting it was really really tasty.

After lunch we were taken through straits on our canoes between a whole bunch of tall mountains covered in foliage. The water was such a light blue and there was no sign of habitation in sight besides the canoes.

The boat then took us to a small island to play on the beach but Ying and I were too tired and slept under the shade of the trees. The canoe drivers played hackey sack while the other holidayers played in the water.

We were then taken back to the port, on the way our hosts played Thai songs on a guitar and sang, it was a really amazing experience. They then sang some english songs but the only one I knew was “Wonderful tonight” by Eric Clapton, I sang along.