Temples, Caves, And Motorbike Crashes.

This post was originally published on 5 April, 2023, and moved here, to my new blog.

We decided it was time for a rest day. Too many days kiteboarding in a row, and I was starting to feel a bit old. Some of my old injuries and arthritises come back after about 10 days in a row, so it was time to jump on the motorbike and go explore. We found three caves, all either with temples surrounding the openings, with temples in the interior of the cave, or both. The greatest part of this whole day was that we wandered aimlessly through caves equal in grandeur to Carlsbad Caverns, but we were completely, absolutely, one hundred percent alone. We did not see another human being in any of these three caves. There were monks at the entrances, and in two caves they turned on the lights for us.

These are pictures of all three caves, and no, I am not going to distinguish them by name.

This guy…

The Buddha sits in the entrance of one of the caves, and as you come around this circular loop in the cave, this is the view.

Buddha figures on limestone.

These amazing combinations of flowstone and rimstone pools are everywhere.

It is an amazing meditation on how vast millions, or hundreds of millions, of years really is. These formations are formed one drop at a time, over those years. We found formations that were one-half inch long, and others that were eight to ten meters tall. If you can magnify these pictures, look at the texturing of the rock. It is amazing, and is the result of little waves formed by water dripping into pools, then depositing the floating calcite and lime at the edges as the water flows by or evaporates.

There were these immense rooms, one after another, separated by little holes, or low ceilings that we could cross. Each one was so different somehow, even within the same cave, and then you realize the difference between places that had running water longer, or drier sections that were formed by water from above. Each one had its own energy and feel.

Sometimes they just look like molten wax. It kind of reminds me of when you overdo the psilocybin and you watch the things around you melt into other forms. In any case, they are so interesting. I probably explored this feature alone for twenty minutes.

It is just so alien looking. This one was about four or five meters tall, and about ten meters horizontally. 

Then, we decided to wrap it up and head home. It was about an hour and a half on the motorbike, and we were getting close to sunset. When you are riding, the bugs are everywhere, and seem to all aim directly for your eyes. It can be a bit of a problem. I had to try to use my sunglasses, and so that gives me the perfect excuse of why I didn’t see the shallow patch of gravel (that was the exact same color as the pavement) as I was braking to enter a gas station parking lot. The front tire locked, slid sideways,  and down we went. Tam has done this before with me (It is, unfortunately, not the first time that this has happened), so, like the first time, she made sure she lined up her flight from the scooter to land directly on top of me. She has gotten good at this crashing thing. It did however result in a few minor injures: Road rash on both of our left knees, really deep bruises on our left shoulders and backs, and what may well be a broken left little finger for me. We choose to consider ourselves lucky, in spite of a few scrapes, bruises and purple fingers, because it felt like things could have come out much worse.

All in the name of good clean fun and adventure!

My swollen and purple little finger… It doesn’t move too well at this point. 

Tam’s poor knee and toes.

My knee. Not as bad as Tam’s, but covered in iodine.

 
In all seriousness, what a terrible feeling to have done this to the girl I love and care for and try to protect. I felt like a complete shit-heel for the rest of the hour ride home (and all last night and today too). I don’t recommend this to anyone. Try not to crash your scooter and ding up the one you love. It’s shitty. I can only say that I am glad it wasn’t worse. I don’t think I could live with that.

Did I mention that this fucking retirement is trying to kill me?