What another day with no cycling you say, we did climb “A mountain” though.

Master of all he surveys

Not really being “let’s wander around the town” type of people it was off for a walk up to the Tiger Cave Temple. We booked a minibus return trip for 200 baht each via the hostel reception dropping us off at 1:00 pm and collecting us at 4:00 pm which proved to be plenty of time.

Says it all

It was a short 10 km drive to where we were dropped at the main temple. We walked through this to get to the start of the climb up to the top of the mountain. 1237 steps and it took around 40 minutes, gaining 300+ metres of height. Janet’s Fitbit would have gone into overdrive today.

Very steep steps

To say the steps were steep would be an understatement, but the steps were very steep. With the heat and humidity it was as though someone had just soaked us with a hosepipe. There were an awful lot of very unfit tourists struggling up here.

At the top there are a couple of viewing platforms, lots of monkeys (more on these later) along with statues of Buddha.

The views are magnificent even on a not too clear day like today, you see Krabi and it’s estuary with the sea beyond, masses of palm oil plantations and hugely steep mountains (hills) of limestone.

There is Buddha’s footprint here as well, or at least a naturally formed foot shaped bowl in the limestone.

Buddha’s footprint

Next the descent, here you can really appreciate the steepness of those steps, plenty of clinging to the rails on the side of the path. It was not too bad really, then you were back down and heading straight to the drinks shop for an iced Thai Lemon Tea which is very nice even though they seem to add around a tablespoon of sugar into it, well we did just burn off a few calories after all.

Time to wander around the Tiger Temple, it’s gets its name from a tiger that used to live in the cave, read all about it here Wikipedia Link.

The dragon and tiger statues are very impressive.

There are a lot of monkeys here, all waiting to relieve unsuspecting tourists of food or anything that looks food like.

At 4:00 pm the taxi appeared and once back at the hostel we jumped in the shower and changed ready to go and get food. Tonight was Italian night, pizza and pasta, the pasta lovely, the pizza very average.

We will have a stroll out later on, closer to New Year, but we wish everyone a Happy New Year in advance, or not if you are reading this on the 1st.

We have uploaded a couple of panoramic video views from the top and a monkey clip as well. The links are below.

https://youtu.be/jqM4Yzbd2r4 panorama part 1

https://youtu.be/d5Fi1TqP4sU panorama part 2

https://youtu.be/9CMt7RKGgNk monkeys monkeys monkeys