Phuket Trip Day 6!

Today we were up very early in order to see the sunrise, and the mist crawl over the mountains.  We got into a military bus, and drove to the spot.  We then had to climb up a slight slope (but due to the fact I haven't been doing much excersize, it felt like a whole mountain (hehe)) before finally arriving at the top of the hill.

It was well worth the slight hike though, the sunrise was pretty cool, even though we didn't really get to see the sun rise, we saw the mist, which was awesome!!

So here is a picture of the mist creeping through the jungle.  It was really awesome to watch, and in some places it looked like a white foggy river running through the trees.  There was some long story about how it resembled a snake and stuff, but I can't really remember....oops. 

 Another picture of the fog crawling through the jungle with a  little bit of the sunrise in the background.  It wasn't cold out, but I was feeling tired due to the fact that it was really early in the morning, and I hadn't had a sleep in for a loong time. 

 This is another picture...not sure what else I can say about it....so it is just another picture of the fog. 

 Hehe...yet another picture of the morning fog.  I'll leave it at that.

 More fog pictures, well more of mist pictures than fog pictures...

 A wild orchid.  Orchids here are very common, and they grow everywhere.  This one was just growing alongside the path, so I decided to take a picture of it, because I know how much Grandpa loves orchids. 

Leaving the area where we watched the sunrise, this is a picture of the road, with the mist slowly creeping up on us. 

Our next order of  business was going caving.  This was a rally cool experience because it allowed us to do a variety of things.  We got to explore a cave, do a bit of swimming, and  a lot of climbing around.  If you had back problems or leg problems, it wouldn't have been a good trip, but it was quite fun.

This is one of the formations that we saw in the cave.  We had to bend at funny angles in order to get around it.  We could either go under it, or squeeze between it and the wall on the opposite side. 

So this is at the mouth of the cave, we had to climb down into it.  We got to climb through it.  This was one of the few areas that most people (I was short enough to be able to walk through most of it) could actually stand up in.  The only source of light that we had was three flashlights that were spread out throughout the group. 

Another formation in the cave that I thought was pretty cool.  It was hard to avoid hitting some of them, and one or two people ended up smackking their heads on the formations.  Luckily I was not one of these people.  

The crawling portion.  There were some places that you had to crawl in order to get to the otherside.  I'll tell you one thing, I was really happy that there was water flowing through the cave, because crawling on your knees in sand can get pretty painful.  I swam most of the areas that involved me crawling. :)

A group shot of us standing in the cave.  Its hard to see, but in the background there is a small waterfall, but you wouldn't be able to see it.  It was hard to get good pictures because it was really dark, and you pretty much just randomly shot a picture in the dark, and hoped that you got what you wanted. 

The climbing section.   There were a few areas where you actually had to climb.  Luckily there were ropes and ladders that you could grasp onto, but it was still pretty slippery, and somewhat scary in places.  None of us fell off, but my foot did slip a few times, and I was very happy that I had a good grip on the wall, because falling would have been pretty painful. 

 Bats....well like many caves, this cave had bats.  The girl from Finland discovered that she was terrified of bats, causing her to shriek (much to our displeasure) everytime a bat came near.  These were fruit bats, so we didn't need to worry about them coming after us.  It was really cool to be sitting there in the dark and feel the rush of the wind caused mby the bats, gently stroke your face. 

 Another shot of the bats in the cave, this time actually getting a few bats in action (flying).  They were pretty small, which surprised me, I guess I somewhat expected huge bats that would fly down and suck my blood...I think I have been reading too many vampire stories.  Haha

 The final destination within the cave was this waterfall.  The water was coming down quite quickly, making it hard for me to keep my eyes open for a picture, but now that I look at the picture, you can't really tell if my eyes are open or not..so it doesn't really matter.  :)

 Climbing through another section of the cave on our way out of the cave.  :)

A group picture at the cave where we just were.  It was pretty awesome :)

Our final stop of the day was hiking up a mountain to see some big waterfalls.  Two of the girls weren't feeling up to climbing up a mountain, so they stayed on the bus, while the rest of us headed up the mountain. 

 The hike started out pretty good, not to hard or anything.  We had to cover ourselves in tobacco and water in order to scare the leeches away.  Due to the increase of rain that we had been having (due to it being the rainy season) we had to be extra careful about leeches.  We were doing pretty good, but suddenly everyone started booking it....Emi and I had no clue what was happening, so we just ran with them, with no idea why.  We were told we would only be running for 400 meters at most, but by the time we eventually stopped it felt like much more than 400 meters..  It turns out Anna (one of the girls from the USA)  had been bit by a leech, two actually, and we were running so that the others didn't follow us.  It turns out Pee-Boy, our chaperone, is terrified of leeches, and let out a very girly screech when he found out about the leeches. 

This is a section of the path that we walked.  We had lunch a few hundred meters away from this area, before heading back toward the bus because we figured the leeches would only get worse the closer we got to the waterfalls. 

We ended up not seeing the waterfalls, which was a little dissappointing, but on the bright side I didn't get any leeches...Anna ended up with two, and David had like 5 living on his socks.  Pee-Boy freaked out every time, so it was quite amusing. 

That was the end of our trip, and we all headed off to our respective buses, before heading off to our towns.  It was a long but exciting trip, that I enjoyed thoroughly.