"I'm so Glad We Didn't Die Today"

So we decided to rent scooters today, figuring it would give us the chance to explore the area without being restricted to public transportation. I (Ron) have never ridden anything motorized with two wheels before, while Carole had back in University. So the rental lady was nice enough to give us a demo, and didn't laugh too hard at our lurching circuit around the parking lot. One scooter was almost empty, so our first task was to fill it up, and of course, the gas station is off the most busy road around, and of course, we got lost.

Once filled up, we then found a quiet area where we could practice turning, stopping, and going forwards. This seemed easy enough. The real challenge: doing this in Thai traffic. We wanted to go to Wat Tham Sua, or Tiger Cave Monastery. Traffic here is not quite on the scale of India, but it not exactly a paragon of order. On a fairly busy road (think McLeod Trail in Calgary), you would have vehicles backing up on the side of the road, backing up onto the road, pulling over, and stopping for no apparent reason. Vehicles behind are nice enough to go around you, but might makes right, and vehicles turning onto the road do not wait for motor bikes, they will pull in front of you, and you have to swerve around. Thai drivers are generally polite, but I suspect our erratic driving and ignorance of the unspoken rules of the road made for a few close calls.

We finally made it to Wat Tham Sua, and took a deep breath when we got off our bikes. The monastery is built to one side of a huge karst pillar. We wandered around, then went of one of the trails which took is into rainforest, where we wandered around in the presence of 1000 year old trees (or so they are called - but they are big!) At the base of the pillar were a series of caves and small shrines. Today, walking in a rainforest and stumbling across a Buddha statue at the base of a limestone cliff, we felt like we were in Thailand.

We then ascended the 1237 steps which took us up the pillar to the shrine at the top, which had a fairly large Buddha statue there. Unfortunately, the air was quite humid, and thus the visibility was limited; I'm sure the vistas would be stellar on a clear day. I had to wonder how they constructed the concrete staircase, very steep in places. There must have been a lot of monk-power involved.

Our return home seemed much more relaxing; not sure if the traffic was less, or we were finally getting the hang of the scooters and traffic. It was quite the white-knuckle adventure today. Considering the conditions for learning this, I kept telling Carole after we parked our bikes: "I'm so glad we didn't die today!" So guess what we're doing tomorrow?