Lee n Tan

Slept in still catching up on lost sleep from the bus trip. Went on the hunt for somewhere to hire some scooters, not being a tourist town, this proved a little difficult. We eventually found a place but I think what we hired was actually a bike that had been traded in as it was a Honda Dealership. We only ended up hiring one so the day should be interesting!!!!

First stop was a cave sanctuary called ‘Khao Luang’, there where monkeys everywhere. Ken greeted us and ended up being our guide around the caves, he said the monkeys were friendly monkeys (we didn’t believe him). When a car pulls in to park they actually site 3 foot long stuffed toy crocodiles on the roof of the cars so the monkeys don’t climb all over them, very innovative!!

The cave has 5 chambers, the 1st and largest has an opening in the roof so the suns rays shone down on all the Buddha images. Ken said there are 410 Buddha statues in the cave but only about 10 have their original heads, he says many people come in and chop the heads off and sell them on the black market. some of the original Buddha’s were 400 years old!! Older than Oz. One of the other chambers housed a shrine that the local women come to, to pray to become pregnant if they are having issues. They place cars, trucks for a boy and dolls etc for a girl.

We hooned around the city after this just checking out the scenery. We stopped for lunch, which I think could possibly the tastiest Thai yet and luckily missed a huge downpour. It took us a while after lunch to find the bus stop to take us to Cha-am (our next destination). In the process we stumbled upon the nigh market (which was just getting set up) and had our first serve of fishcakes for the trip, they were delicious. We ended up back there for dinner and ordered another serve.