Southeast Asia: Jan 16 - Underground River Tour, Sabang!

On the 15th we took a 2 hour van ride to Sabang and our Underground River tour!

Pitstop on our way to sabang

Brother and sister

Keith getting attacked by the monkey

Mairi came up after and the monkey jumped her too!

When we got to Sabang we had to wait a couple hours so we went exploring, and then had a buffet lunch with all sorts of Philippino goodies: whole bbq'd fish, curries, chicken, veggies. The food wasn't too bad but like the rest of their dishes it had a fish sauce taste.

Sabang

...captured one of the hundreds of crazy star fish while waiting for our river tour!

Keith chillin

Kaila and Mairi

an old Banka

Then we headed to the river by water taxi (called an outrigger banka) across the open ocean bay. We waited near the entrance to the river and our tour guide told us to make sure we didn't have any "plastics" (plastic bags!) out or the monkeys would come! And they sure did... A man was carrying a bag full of plastic rain ponchos for his family for the tour and the monkey ran like lightning and ripped a poncho out of the bag then ran up the tree! It happened so fast.. Then Mairi put her backpack down to climb a tree and Kaila was watching it and a monkey came and almost unzipped it! Sneaky monkeys.. they had fat bellies so obviously they were great at stealing food!

Bankas in action

disembark!

at the entrance to the path to the river

Kaila, Keith, Mairi

waiting near the entrance. but closer to the ocean

Fat little monkey


Mairi in the tree while the monkey tries to steal her things...


the entrance!

We got into a smaller boat with no motor with our guide and a few other tourists and headed in to the cave! It was all dark and keith was the "light man" at the front of the boat, shining a bright flashlight on all the stalactites and stalagmites as our tour guide relayed what vegetables or religious scenes they looked like. It was sort of funny for a while but it would have been nice to have silence in the cave! There were sooo many bats on the ceiling. We were told not to open our mouths or we would get the "bat shit" inside! The cave is about 24km long but we were ony allowed to go 4km in.