13 May 2010
The time had come for some jungle walking, to experience Buddhist culture and to search for some tigers. James and I 
set off on hired scooters with a vague sense of direction. Eventually we spotted a large concrete structure which formed part of the temple, we had made it.
A female monk was chatty and told me a little about the different Buddha statues and answered my questions on whether I was dressed appropriately enough to visit the temple and walk up the tower. I Donated $100 THB towards building a Buddha statue, I remembered my manners and refrained from saying “what, another Buddha”.
The Tiger Cave Temple area was swarming with monkeys, they were jumping all over the 7 Eleven and climbing on power/phone cables.
I walked up the tall concrete monument which had shown us the way to the temple. I concluded this monument was a third world attempt at something similar to the Eifel Tower – it looked good from a distance and provided a good view
from the top but the details of the design and construction were dubious with metal rebar protruding from the bare concrete in numerous locations.
After conquering the concrete monument I decided to undertake the 1237 steps to get to the top of the mountain. I had no idea what was at the top, and no idea what it would actually feel like to walk 1237 steps, but I thought a good five minute walk would be a fair estimate. The mountain was really worth the visit, partly because of my surprise after walking for a good five minutes and realising that a 1237 step climb was going to take significantly longer, it was easily a half hour slug. I had decided to undertake the challenge as a form of exercise so I did it none stop at a decent pace and by the time I made the top I was sweating profusely and gasping for breath.
I found James at the top and we had a five minute look around, took some photos and then decided to run back down before the approaching typhoon hit, it didn’t eventuate as a typhoon but made for a cold wet and almost miserable remainder to the day.
On the way back on the scooters we stopped at a road side restaurant/stall to have some food and warm up but they would not feed me what I was pointing at. This was the first major incident with a language barrier that I couldn’t seem to get over; they said it was too hot, I said I wanted to try it anyway, they said “no”. I didn’t know how the locals ate this particular food because most of their business seemed to be takeaway where someone would order a curry/soup and she would serve it into a plastic bag and seal it up for them to take away. They wanted to make me a fried noodle dish which I eventually had to agree to. Mental note, learn some Thai.
