Pictures of the last two weeks.

Karsts off the road toward Fang on my way to Mae Sai. (This is what I envision areas of southwest China will look like)

I did some caving in Tham Lod. This cave was huge, with a river running through it. We floated through on a bamboo raft about halfway and then the driver poled us back out. Later that night I returned to the exit end of the cave to see the Bird and Bat show. Every night at dusk of thousands and thousands of bat and fork-tailed swifts gather at the exit of the cave. The bats are exiting the swifts are entering the cave. It was like a tornado of black leaves as they flew around coming and going. Under the twirling tornado fat carp waited for two birds or bats to clash and fall into the river where they would eat them whole. Besides the bat show there was a small Buddhist monastery that had a handful of small caves used by their monks for meditation. Also enjoying the bats were two monks from Phillipines who spoke excellent English and were just passing through Tham Lod (the village where we were). After it got dark I decided to tromp my way up the cave and back to the guesthouse. I'd seen a map of the cave and understood it to be about one kilometer long and shaped like an elbow macaroni. With my light from my bicycle in hand I set off walking upstream until the dimming light of the bat viewing area got smaller and smaller. When I got to the bend in the cave at the middle, I noticed a sort of sandy area beach on the side of the cave, and when to investigate. I sat down and turned off my light. Wow. Talk about quiet. And dark. I walked the second half of the bend sans light just figuring if I'm in the river I should make it out. When I got back to the guesthouse I talked with the owner (John Spies, Australian man who has lived in Thailand for over 30 years and has discovered numerous cave systems of Thailand) about how cool I thought going through the cave at night was. He told me made ten years ago he would lead treks into caves for a few days where they would camp in there and try to explore new areas.

This is riding out from the campsite shown below.

Camping. I climbed down to this waterfall and decided to camp there. As I was swimming off the grime of the day it occured to me I didn't have a lighter and this would be a perfect spot for a campfire (on a rock with a big depression in the middle of the river). I'm not sure if it was my subconscious ahead of me or what, but then I noticed a small stream of steam on the other side of the rock I was clinging to. HOT SPRINGS!, I thought. Turns out it was the embers of someones fire earlier that day barely smoking, but it was enough that I could throw some bamboo on their and get it roaring again. That night I ate BBQ bananas.