Shirley Temple'd Out

Many who travel through these parts claim that by the end of their trip they have become "Temple'd Out". These temples are incredible but I can see how they would all start to run together if you were planning all your "sight-seeing" around visiting them. Kady and I have made no special pilgrimage to any of these temples really. But you cannot escape them. At every corner, you are bombarded with images like these:



For the most part, my favorite Thailand sites and activities were the ones we sort of accidentally stumbled upon:

*feeding the elephant



*exploring this cave with adorable children watching our every move



* The countryside, in general

* The Butterfly Tornado at the Waterfall

So we opted to wander through or around only the temples we happened to stumble upon.

For the most part...

The one thing/temple Kady and I truly sought out was the "Tiger Cave". Kady had started chatting with a French couple (maybe they were siblings?) who had moved to Krabi. I asked them, "What must we absolutely do before we leave Krabi?"

They described the Tiger Cave in language that made it sound like to most tranquil, wonderful, beautiful place in the world. The accent didn't hurt.
It was settled; I had to see it.

This proved to be more difficult than we could have ever envisioned. We had a map but it was the most worthless map ever composed. Even the locals couldn't read it. And don't even get me started on the signage in Thailand. There will be a sign and it will say: "Tiger Cave". It will say 11 km. There will even be an arrow pointing that way. Then two kilometers later, there is a fork in the road with no further instruction. Don't eeeven get me staaarted.

It took us three days to finally find the Tiger Cave. In the end, all we really would have had to do was look up. It's so high up and shiny and golden, you can see it from almost anywhere in Krabi.
We arrived perhaps three hours before sunset. The grounds were quite a spectacle. There were food stands, places to buy bananas for the monkeys, and women selling the local lottery tickets. People from all over Asia were here and the various structures seemed to represent different sects of Buddhism- the Chinese people were over at this structure and the Thai people were over at that structure, etc...
I believe this was the first time I've been in close close proximity with monkeys- not to be confused with monks (I've seen lots of those)- which was very very exciting for me. Everywhere, there were signs warning us to keep our belongings close to our persons to avoid being ripped off by the monkeys.

On the way down, I took some video-footage (stay tuned) of a little tiny baby monkey who wasn't cooperating and stopped putting the plastic bag over his head as soon as I started filming. As my attention was turned towards the baby monkey, a large one inched closer and closer to me. I looked over my shoulder just in time to scream as it lurched at my bum. That's what you get for having brass buttons on the backside of your pants.

We had been told we had over 1200 steps to climb to get to the top of the main temple. I don't know why this didn't faze me. But after about 100 steps in 95 degree weather choking on 98 percent humidity... I pretty much thought I would die.

Monkeys raced all around us in trees. But even they didn't climb much higher than step 300 or so.
Monks and monks in training of all ages came and went.


We had been told the view at the top would be beautiful and on a clear day you could practically see three countries. It's not that I didn't believe it would be beautiful; there just really wasn't any way to prepare for it. We stayed up there for over an hour which allowed us to see the light change over and over and over.

I can't really think of a more perfect way to say farewell to Thailand- a country I've been obsessed with visiting since I was about 10 years old.


Well done, Thailand, I thought to myself. Well done.