If anybody ever suggests climbing to the top of the tiger temple located near to Krabi town as it sounds like fun, kick them hard. If they are still smiling after you have dished your blow then you can be pretty sure that they may not be of sound enough mind to be making such suggestions, as fun it definitely is not.
Four of us from the hostel, Laura, Kat, Barry and myself decided to go up and after breakfast crammed ourselves into the back of a taxi for the short journey out to its location. Another, Taru who had ventured up previously decided that bed was her preferred option.
The climb started easy enough with small shallow steps leading us in before steeper steps of varying angles and gradient took over,escalating us past tetchy monkeys who really took a dislike to me and people descending back from the peak. Our rest breaks became longer and more frequent as we made our way the 800 meters to the summit and for 1236 of those steps I was fine. Then came step number 1237, literally the final step and I suddenly came over very Ill, a feeling which took a good half hour, plenty of water and half a packet of menthos to finally shake off.
Sure enough, the view from the top was outstanding, but my thoughts were more preoccupied with thinking what sort of sadistic bastard would decide to build a temple in such a location. I suppose therefor its to its testament that there are no shortage of people, locals and tourists who were taking the path to enlightenment every single day. For me though once was enough. Once was definately enough.
Descending was easier on the lungs, but tougher on the knees and quads. To help put our minds somewhere else, Barry and I started up random conversations between ourselves with the purpose of being over heard by the passers by ascending. Topics ranged from the ludicrous cost of admission at the summit (there is no charge) to being the weirdest place to have found a McDonalds so far (it's a Burgerking). One couple searching misguidedly for motivation asked if the climb it was worth it, I said "no", smiled and carried on walking down, uncomfortably. down.
Perhaps the monkeys could see that I was trouble as they gave me much less attention than they had on the way up. All I know is that understand fully Taru's decision to stay in bed a little longer that day. It was worth the effort for sure, but twice would have been pushing it.
We didn't even get a free bowl of frosties.
Grrreat view.
No comments:
Post a Comment