Canine Cave Spelunking

Arriving at Khao Wong Caves, we were greeted by a large, closed gate and a barking dog running out from behind it. Unaffected by the closed gate, we parked the bike and the dog slowly muffled her barks, then approached us skeptically, and eventually let us scratch her head. She then lead us around the gate, wagging her tail, straight to where, presumably, her owner was relaxing. The owner warned us that the cave was closed due to a small flood. In my simple, modest Thai I explained that we didn’t care, we had already come so far and we wanted to walk as far as we could into the cave anyways. Impressed by my Thai, or completely careless about what the idiot falang did, he obliged. With our new four-legged friend leading the way, first crossed a shaky rope bridge over a small river, then through some slippery mud, all the way to the cave.


The limestone caves were cool, but the best part about them was impossible to capture on camera. With the dog by our side, we walked as far was the light would take us into the cave, all to the sound of hundreds and hundreds of bats screeching from the darkness. Though I didn’t admit it at the time, of the three of us, I was the biggest chicken. Faith and the dog were far braver than I, walking right into the cave, evidently not sharing my fear of an enormous gust of bats swooping from the cave only to feast on my eyeballs like Thai fish swarming over a foot-long green bean.

For me, each step was a calculated distance further that I would have to sprint back out when the inevitable loud noise would set off the monumental bat exodus from the cave. Faith tested her eyes walking past the sunlight though, and our new friend jogged into the cave as if he hadn’t noticed the absence of light or the palpable screeching of the frenzy of bats. As the dog disappeared out of sight, I thought it the bats would be coming at any moment, but a couple minutes later he casually walked out, unimpressed by the large, empty hole in the earth.