Wats, Monkeys and Caves
From Travels to SE Asia, possibly China and India for ?? Months! in Petchaburi, Thailand on Sep 18 '07
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Arriving in Petburi, I opted to stay at Phetkasem Guesthouse that was not downtown. I got a tuk tuk that had a woman driver, which was a surprise since I hadn't seen one before. Once dropping me off she asked me if I was going to Khao Luang and Bandai-It caves. I said (or should I say motioned as she didn't speak any English) I was going the next day and she told me it would be 300 Baht (approx $9.40) roundtrip. I knew that it was probably high, but given that Petburi is not a very touristy town so finding a tour to join would be hard and that I wasn't in town to find any other possible options, with the help of the guesthouse owner, June was to pick me up at 8am.
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My room was only 250 Baht (approx $7.80), was large and clean and had a small TV. However, not sure why they had to put me on the top floor as it didn't look to be all that busy - in fact I didn't see another single person there! I had to switch rooms because when I went to go wash my hands in the first one, the water poured out right onto the floor. Upon further inspection, the pipe between the sink and the wall was gone!
I decided to check out Khao Wang which is a hill that has a palace, which is now a museum, and some other buildings. When I got to the entrance, there were some hawkers, some selling bags of corn to feed the monkeys that were eagerly awaiting to be fed. I didn't think this was such a good idea, so instead I took some photos of them and was amazed at just how fat some of them were! Once I had paid my entrance fee and read the warning sign about the monkeys, I had hoped to find the cable car. LP had said that the climb was pretty strenuous and given how hot it was and that I hadn't been able to eat lunch and that the museum was closing in 45 minutes, this sounded like a good idea. However, I couldn't find it.
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Once I made it to the museum, it wasn't really anything that special and only took me about 15 minutes to go through it. However, the views were pretty cool. I walked up to the other buildings on the hill and managed to find the cable car only to find out it was only going down. I figured I had already done the hard part of walking up, so heading down should be easy. As I walked back down, I noticed that the number of monkeys had increased, especially at a small pool. I stopped to watch a monkey and had my back to the pool. The next thing I heard was a loud splash. When I turned around, I saw a monkey coming up for air. I guess I never really realized that monkeys really enjoy water! I was then rooted to that spot and sure enough a couple more monkeys started dive bombing from the trees above, into the water below. It was so hilarious, I found myself laughing out loud with only the monkeys to hear me. I tried to get a video, but there was no predicting when it was going to happen again.
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After watching the monkeys for some time, the monkeys in the pool started to rush by me, just a few feet away. Turning around I saw what the excitement was about - it was feeding time. What good timing on my part! Good thing I didn't take the cable car down. A worker was feeding the monkeys corn and rice and now there were a ton of monkeys hanging out.
After watching the feeding frenzy for awhile, I decided to head on down since it looked like it was closing time. A vendor who had tried to get me to buy water on the way up (but I already had some) talked to me on the way down. Apparently she had a bad day, only selling 120 Baht (approx $3.75) worth. All the visitors were smarter than me and took the cable car up! I ended up buying some mango and as she told me that she was 39 and had a 12 year old child that was born just after her husband was killed in a motorcycle accident, I had place the mango on her table. Next thing you know, a monkey came between us and took off with my mango. Now I know where the expression cheeky monkey comes from!
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As I continued to walk down the hill watching and taking way too many pictures of the monkeys, suddenly a monkey jumped onto my leg. I had some close encounters earlier, but not as close as this! After shaking my leg and shrieking a bit, the monkey finally let go. This then happened to me a couple more times before reaching the entrance. Maybe monkeys weren't so cute after all! I think the thing is, don't look them in the eyes for an extended period of time.
Given that there wasn't anything to do by my guesthouse, I had planned on finding a tuk tuk to get to the other guesthouse for some dinner. By the time I did find one, I was already half way there so I opted to keep walking. The trip in took about 25 minutes. At Rabieng Guesthouse I ended up sitting behind two other travelers who ended up chatting to me. Gavin was a Canadian who worked for an airline as an ER coach and Teomi was a German student. Gavin did most of the talking of the two and we found out that he had spent 8 months in India where he managed to get typhoid, yellow fever and type IV malaria, which almost killed him. Yikes! Not a ringing endorsement for India and that was will him taking his shots, although he did lapse for one week with his malaria pills. But amazingly, he had quite a good attitude about it all and his father's advice for this trip - don't get an STD! At least with that one, you have complete control :) Turns out both of them were planning on going to Khao Luang and Bandai-It caves the next day, so we decided to go together. I left at 9pm to head back to my guesthouse and thought it would be easy to find a tuk tuk - apparently not. I wasn't too thrilled about having to walk back, but not overly concerned as the town looked pretty safe. However, I did manage to find a tuk tuk after about 10 minutes.
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The next morning I had hoped to get some breakfast before heading out, but breakfast only started at 8am. So, my only option, besides from some chips, was to eat one of those instant cup of noodles. Sitting on my bed, watching BBC World, I felt like I was in college again! June showed up 5 minutes early, but we ended up waiting for 15 for Gavin and Teomi to arrive. Our first stop was to Khao Luang, which was a cave sanctuary. We headed in and found many Buddha statues, along with a large reclining Buddha. It was really quite dark so you had to look carefully to find the entrances to other caves. I was quite glad to have some company because if I had been on my own, I don't think I would have ventured into some of the caves, especially those with bats. At one point, Gavin started heading down some stairs into a small cave entrance (Teomi and I opted out of this one) but only for him to turn around pretty quickly. He said it was the heat, but I wonder if he was really scared ;) After a good look around, we headed back to the entrance, only to find about 7 monkeys blocking the way. Now, after the day before, I was a little more cautious about them, but Gavin and Teomi were well way behind me and were quite happy for me to forge the way!
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Next stop was to Bandai-It Caves, another cave sanctuary. We were greeted by a guide who we paid 100 Baht (approx $3.10) each for the entrance fee. It was up to us how much we wanted to give him at the end of the tour. We walked down a flight of stairs to get to the sanctuary, that had 5 caves in all, although you can only go into 4, the other one was higher up and was a bat cave. The second cave held an amazing 350 Buddhas and we were given a gold leaf to place on the biggest one. Supposedly, you are to make a wish as you place the leaf, but unfortunately I forgot as my leaf wasn't cooperating and then I managed to get some of the already placed leaves stuck to my hand - I hope this wasn't a bad omen!
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Next we each took turns in getting our fortune. To do this, you sit on a mat and shake a container of sticks, each with a number on it. As you shake the container, one stick is supposed to fall out and you get the fortune that corresponds to that number. I managed to dump about half of the sticks out to the loud comment of "Farang!" by our guide. I picked up the stick that I thought fell first which in turn gave me not a very good fortune. When this happens, you place the fortune into the Buddha's hand (the one that we placed the gold leaf onto) in order to take the bad fortune away. There was no hesitation on my part to do exactly that! Teomi had a good fortune and Gavin had a bad one, but he opted to keep his. Given his propensity for illness, did he really think that was a good idea??
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Our guide was pretty informative so we decided upon a 220 Baht (approx $6.90) donation between the three of us, which he seemed quite happy about. We didn't end up spending too long on both locations as Gavin had a train to catch, but I felt we had spent as much time as was really necessary.
I already had my pack in the tuk tuk as I was planning on heading straight to the bus station, but we made a stop first for Gavin to get his belongings. Unfortunately, that stop ended up being about 25 minutes because of issues with getting his clothes back that had been laundered. However, I believe we managed to get him to the train station in time for his train and I figured that it was probably going to be delayed anyhow. I was then dropped off at the bus station and had about an hour to wait before leaving for Kanchanaburi.
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