Day 8 - Sunday - Day Off

We started the day with a short lie in and another amazing breakfast from the local team. We had planned to visit the local bat cave but the owner Ronnie wasn't available until the afternoon, so we went for a swim in the river instead.

We'd visited the smaller bat cave in site yesterday afternoon. That was a bit of an adventure - holding on to bits of rock while scrambling along dusty boulders with a sheer drop if you lost your footing. It was worth the climbing as we sat in the cave and watched a lot of bats flying and squeaking.

Back to today - after lunch we started our packing ready to leave tomorrow and then set out to find Ronnie's house. The house we thought was his had some people in who had never heard of him. Randomly as we were walking about we saw Louisa from our project on a motorbike taxi. She stopped to say hi and we explained to the driver that we were looking for Ronnie. To our surprise, we discovered it was Ronnie driving the bike. He has a local name and his friends know him by that instead. We had in fact found his house.

The big bat cave was easier to navigate. Inside it was like a bat cathedral with stone walls and ancient stalactites. We found thousands of bats of various species and sizes. To make it more fun, there were spiders nearly as big as your hand, cockroaches, frogs and colorful bees or wasps that we were told had a killer sting. One of the larger bat's location systems must have been not working as it crashed into my stomach and shrieked - not sure who was more surprised, me or the bat !

On the way back, we stopped off at Ronnie's house and he gave us a large bunch of rambutan fruit. Spiky balls with a white centre that taste like grape. Another first to add to the stink beans, durian fruit, mangostin and fern.