It’s 6pm and I’m clocking into my corporate job from Azalea Wellness Village Resort. The wonderful staff have brought me a pot of tea, which helps with my lingering sleepiness but not with the malaise of uninspiring work.
Then I look up. Hundreds of bats are beginning their “morning” commute. They’ve got a long night of catching bugs ahead of them just like me (software bugs, in my case). We’re co-workers. We’re a team. Is this corporate culture? I hope so.
Anyway, that’s how it started. It ended with me tripping over a stalagmite in a million degree cave and falling into bat poop, ruining my most expensive white linen pants. Here’s how we got there.
I’m from Wisconsin. I don’t know how to dress for the heat and I also just don’t know how to dress, in general. So I ended up walking around this tiny rural town in outrageous, thrifted clubwear every day. On this day I was wearing a fierce NASCAR inspired backless leotard with a checked flag print and lime green trim.
I was dressed for cave, not for temple.
Cut to me waiting at the cave entrance, squirming with embarrassment, as the temple attendant took in my bare shoulders, plunging neckline and exposed midriff, all of which I know better than to wear to a temple.
“All of that’s fine,” he said. “You just can’t wear shorts.”
I go back out to the car and put on my Temple Pants ™. These are from Banana Republic and they are, I’ll have you know, the fanciest and most expensive pants I own. Because, temple.
Having cleared Temple Security, we went upstairs to the cave, past this sign which hilariously has different instructions for English speaking visitors than for Thai. (Thai visitors are simply advised to bring a flashlight.)
As we reached the inside of the cave, overheated and disoriented, eyes still adjusting to the dim light, we were politely mobbed by local guides eager to save us from the grisly doom of spending the rest of our days wandering endless cave corridors slowly losing our minds and eyesight as bats screech overhead. (“But I wouldn’t have to go to work on Monday…!” the fanciful child part of my brain reminds me unhelpfully)
Paid 600 baht to avoid becoming an urban legend and another 400 to a nice elderly man to follow us around with a camera and once again we are RACING through this cave like it’s an obstacle course at a college event and there’s a bucket of beer at the finish line. Click here to read about my previous cave experience and what I learned about cocaine.
Inside the cave it is Very stuffy and hot. Noises are bouncing everywhere, I can’t see anything, and I’m trying to answer the nice camera man who is making polite conversation in Thai. I’m trying not to trip on a stalagmite and die. I’m trying not to hit my head on a stalactite and die.(“Remember that soccer team that got trapped in a cave in Thailand?” the worst part of my brain reminds me.)
Then we were shown a majestic calcium formation shaped by nature in the form of the mythical Naga serpent. I can’t really explain it, but it had really good energy and my friend and I both felt much better after we’d touched it. That alone was worth the whole tour. The sense of deep peace and calm I got from the Naga lasted right up until our tour guide mentioned that the passage we were walking through is often flooded. Cue mental images of drowning AND being lost AND being stabbed by calcium in this cave.
“But the bats,” you ask. “What about the nice bat friends that kept you company at work? Did you get to meet them?” Well, I looked for them. I kind of saw something. But looking up while walking is never a good idea, especially not on uneven ground inside a dark cave filled with slippery bat dung. So down I went, in my nice white Temple Pants ™, right into a big pile of it.
This is all to say that when visiting Chiang Dao Cave, I advise the following: skip the backstage tour and just go to the parts of the cave temple that are open to the public. They’re well lit, wide passages filled with beautiful statues that make creative use of the cave’s architecture. Tip your guides if you do take the tour, because they’re local and they won’t even laugh when you fall down like a cartoon character. And always remember that in a Temple-Cave Combo, temple dress code overrules cave dress code and bat guano never, ever washes out.
