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| Ban Jori-teak coffin |
Our second day we had our first go at the hand drawn maps...as if he were testing our ability to fallow them he gave us three caves...easy ones to find...if we had a local take us...We found the first no problem, the cave known as tum pi man 'spirit cave' or Ban Jori (name of the town) was up on a limestone face, reached by a network of bamboo ladders and stairs. We found a local woman to show us the way, who promptly found another lady and a small child to come along, on the way we picked up one more woman and two more kids... seemed we had the whole village with us. Our fearless leader, a small boy clad in large flip-flops was probably about 5. The caves had four teak coffins, two of them still standing. Amanda found a few pieces of pottery and at first the 'guides' looked upset at her handling them, however they soon joined in the fun of looking through the dirt for more fragments. We shared some oranges and enjoyed the view before heading to the next cave.
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| Our Guides |
This cave was in the next valley farther south. We stopped in the local village and a teenager joined us to show us the way to the next 'tum pi man'. He however, was not sure of the way and it soon became apparent to us that we were just walking through the jungle looking for limestone outcrops not the cave. When we turned around we found another trail that he seemed more sure of...a little ways ahead he became even more confident in this new location however we continued to wander through fields and jungle around another large limestone out crop with no cave. A farmer exchanged some words with him in Thai but we dont know if either of them knew where it was...we turned around and headded back to the village.
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| Coffin Cave |
The third cave that day, known as coffin cave, was just off the road and easy to spot. We arrived a litle before sunset and found five more teak coffins and a 200 year old tamarin tree growing in the cave opening
