Scary cave

It was great to be with Leilei again. He certainly remembered us. And that was it. We were back in Bangxu, one of the most understated and subsequently most beautiful places you could hope to be in with your eight-month old son.

I was whipped away to join some blokes to go to visit a cave. Normally, this wouldn't sound so interesting and indeed it didn't to me. I was knackered and didn't really feel like going but I got on the bike and we drove no more than 20 minutes away. We arrived at a house and there were a few blokes. I thought I saw a few syringes just outside the house but ignored them; I wasn't here for medicinal reasons, nor medicinal drug reasons and I didn't want to find out what they were for.

After a few minutes of the blokes talking in the local tongue I sat down on a hard wooden chair and started to drop off. I didn't drop off though as I recall clearly listening to the blokes talking, and also I wouldn't admit it if I had.

Then, just as I was getting comfortable, we had to move. There were only six of us or so, and we beat an already somewhat beaten path to an entrance into the mountain. It wasn't the hardest trek in the world, but when you have no idea what is before you you do fear for the worst and wish you had several litres of water on you. Instead all they had were literally hundreds of joss sticks, so I gathered we were going to some dead person's place, as they are all over the mountains here (at least the bones are).

But oh no it was far more scary than that. We entered the mouth of a mountain and descended 30' or so before the leader turned on a torch and and pointed to a crack in the wall and said we'd go through that. Although my Mandarin is not that good I realised straight away that I was right as some slim bloke didn't flinch and somehow pushed himself through the base of the crack and disappeared. Then another one did the same thing. Then it was my turn.

I was overcome with a fear I've not known since being four years old and clinging to the dining table when told to go to school for the first time. It was even worse than being taken to my first (and only) piano lesson. But I realised I was an adult and had to face up to my claustrophobic fears (a tautology if ever there was one) so I moved up to the tiny opening and froze.

I had to go back a couple of feet and let the next bloke through and he did it as if it was climbing into the bed of a beautiful woman. And I thought about it. If Tan was watching (or Leilei), how much worse would I feel afterwards if I didn't go through? It was that thought alone that got me to close my eyes and push myself into the six foot long, 18" wide crack, only to be pulled through a couple of seconds later by the others. I'd made it...yahoooo!!! But as soon as I had I realised I'd probably have to do the same journey again to get back. Oh for a dirty G&T...

Getting through the tiny gap (that wasn't me)

But the effort was so worth it. In a few seconds we were transported to what was effectively another world. The floor was full of marble-sized brown balls, and there were stalagmites and stalactites every few feet. I realised that the most amazing thing about what I was seeing was that so few people had seen this before. Other than the normal gravity, and the temperature, and the pressure, and the lack of a space suit, I felt I was on Mars.

Me with Lao Lin...holding up the cave

The joss sticks were put into good use; one was placed every 10' or so so as not to lose the path back to the entrance. Of course my Mandarin became good enough to ask how long they stayed alight, to which the answer was "don't worry...".

This is what made it for me...the extra-terrestrial terra firma...would love to bring a westerner back here some time... 

A praying stalagmite? Well tites come down...

We found ourselves in a huge cave, which, according to what the torches afforded us, looked like the size of a football pitch, and tall enough to cater for a typical Man City free kick too. It was a quite dumbfounding half an hour that in some ways I wish never to repeat but I think will always hanker after. I seemed to have lost my fear about the tight tunnel coming back, and got dragged back in a similar fashion to getting in there. I actually would like to go back there again. It's the closest thing to being on another planet.