November 21st, 2024
On the advice and help from Patty, the owner of the homestay,
we were able to get a driver for the day to take us to four different tourist destinations. Lek picked us up in his car and we started to
drive north of Chiang Rai. His English
wasn’t too bad, definitely better than our Thai and he had a bit of a sense of
humour.
Our first stop was the Choui Fong Tea Plantation. Naomi and I visited some tea plantations in
India back around 2011, but this one certainly was a bit different, definitely
fancier. We stopped for a few photos here
and there then went to the main building which had a cafeteria and a gift
shop. Unlike India, there was no museum
or explanation of the tea growing, harvesting and preparation processes. We had a refreshment with Naomi opting for some
kind of a cold, fancy green tea drink and I had some green tea ice cream. I have to admit that I was a bit taken aback
by my first taste of the ice cream, but it got better and better…not that I’d
go out of my way to buy and eat more.
Approaching the tea plantation:
Next on the list, was Tham Luang Cave. You may not recognize the name, but this is
the cave where 12 young soccer players and their 25-year-old assistant coach
were trapped for 18 days in 2018 due to rising waters from rainfall that occurred
while they were spelunking. The story
captured the attention of the world and experts from all over offered their
help.
Even though Patty had tried to persuade us that it wasn’t
worth visiting the cave as you could only walk a few hundred meters into it. Naomi and I had recently watched the Netflix
movie about the incident and decided that we may regret it if we didn’t visit
it seeing as we were only an hour away.
Lek dropped us off at the parking lot where we got into a truck taxi which took us about a kilometre before we had to get in another truck taxi to go another 500 meters into the national park. It didn’t really make sense to us why we had to switch vehicles, but when travelling, it’s not always wise to look for logic.
Exiting the back of the truck, the driver pointed this way
and that way while speaking in Thai. We
didn’t know what he was trying to convey.
There were half a dozen buildings, most of which seemed to be
empty. Looking around, we had no idea
where the cave was. There were signs for
lots of other things like the toilets and gift shop, but nothing pointing to
the entrance of the cave.
We ended up following some people walking in one direction
and lucked out and found the entrance.
There were a couple of bicycles leaning up against a railing. All of the boys had biked to the cave after a
soccer practice on that fateful day, and this was one of the clues that a park
ranger found to realize that there were people in the cave. Some other items from the team members such
as football jerseys and flip flops were on display along with things used in
the rescue missing, like radios, pipes, water pumps and the most chilling one
to me: the rescue stretcher/sledge that was used to pull each of the boys out
one by one.
If you’re not familiar with the story, the boys hiked into the cave and rain began to fall. The waters rose and they became trapped inside. The ranger not only found their bikes near the end of the day, but also some flip flops and backpacks in the cave. He was unable to go further in due to rising water that had seeped in from the ground above. A rescue mission was launched.
Cave divers explored deeper and deeper into the cave, but this
required placing many oxygen tanks at staging spots so a diver could go further
in. They also set up ropes in order to
find their way through the labyrinth faster.
Nine days after the boys first disappeared, two British divers finally
found the boys on an elevated rock, almost 3 kilometres from the entrance.
Imagine for a moment what these boys were going
through. For these first nine days they
had no food. Dressed in only t-shirts
and shorts, it would have been pretty chilly sleeping on the rocky floor. They had flashlights but they would have had
to use them sparingly so for the majority of the time, they would have been in
pitch dark. I recall being in a cave in
Cappadocia in Turkey and turning off my flashlight for half a minute…it is incredible
how dark it is in a cave.
The boys attempted to dig a way out, not only in hopes of escaping,
but it also gave them a purpose. In an
interview of one of the boys in the movie, he mentioned how the boys inevitably
got to talking about food that they would love to eat, being with their family
and of course girls. One boy asked this
guy what he would say to a naked girl if she appeared in the cave… “Well, I would tell her to freakin’ dig!”
During this time, water pumps had been furiously sucking out
water from the cave, with over a billion litres of water pumped out of the cave. However, with more rain falling, this effort
was in vain.
It was determined that the boys could not stay in the cave
for much longer as the rainy season was approaching (or had just arrived), plus
oxygen levels in their chamber would soon be too low for survival. Many ideas were floated as to how best
extract the boys and it was decided that they be brought out under sedation. Some of the kids could not even swim and it
would have been a harrowing experience to scuba dive all that way if you’ve
never done it before, plus you’re in a dark cave. The boys were put into a “sked” rescue stretcher
with a positive pressure full-face mask.
It took between 4-5 hours to remove each boy but amazingly they did it
successfully.
Unfortunately, the whole rescue procedure was not without its
costs. A Thai Navy SEAL died while on his
return from delivering three oxygen tanks to a chamber and another SEAL died the
following year from a blood infection he contracted during the rescue
operation.
Naomi and I descended some concrete stairs into the cavernous
first section from the entrance but at this time, we were only permitted to go
about 100 meters in.
Returning from the cave to where we had been dropped off, we
found a little building with a fake cave opening that led to a small diorama
detailing the rescue operation. It was
pretty cheesy and some of the lights and displays were turned off. The displays were written in Thai without any
English translation, but it was still worth the 10-minute walk through. Thankfully Google Translate can work miracles
too.
Even though we couldn’t go far into the cave, we were both
glad that we made the effort to visit it.
The entrance area of the cave was impressive, but it was more moving to
think about what had happened there back in 2018.
On Patty’s recommendation, Lek took us to a small village
partway up a small mountain where we had a drink in a restaurant with a nice view. Interestingly, we were only a few kilometres
away from the Myanmar border…at least I thought it was interesting.
Returning to Chiang Rai, Lek dropped us off at the Blue Temple,
properly known as Wat Rong Suea Ten. It
was completed in 2016 and like the White Temple that we had visited the
previous day, it was a bit unorthodox from most temples in Thailand. We wandered around for 15-20 minutes but both
of us were exhausted from the day and the late afternoon sun was beating down
hard. We both agreed that the White
Temple was more impressive and interesting.
That evening we went back into town from our homestay to
wander around a night market where Naomi bought a few things for herself and gifts
for family and friends before having dinner in a big open food area. There were many dining options, although a
lot of them looked foreign and unappetizing to me. We finally settled on Pad See Ew, which is
similar to the famous Pad Thai but has wider noodles. I have to admit that it wasn’t that good…but
it filled a hole.
Tomorrow we are flying to Hanoi… Kop Kuhn Khap Thailand! (Thank you)
No comments:
Post a Comment