Kyaking the caverns

We booked a tour to go kayaking through the mangroves and into the caves and caverns on the mainland.  Off we were in the longboat over to   We jumped into another truck taxi and found out we had to travel for 55 minutes to our designation in the heat and humidity.  Oh well what the hell here we go again.  When we arrived we were loaded into double kayaks and given a few instructions on what to do.  Good thing we had idea of what we were suppose to do.  The couple from Bangkok were not so skilled.  About half way through the trip they tripped and landed in some awful looking canal water.  I threatened Bill with an inch of his life, there was to be no kayak tipping.  It was a little cloudy so the temperature was great for kayaking.  We traveled down the main canal looking down various different side canals wondering how in the world you would be able to find your way around.  They all looked the same and there were definitely no signage. We came up upon a series of bamboo on the water and the guide stopped to pull up a small canister.  Inside was a crab.  Apparently it was a crab farm.  They catch the crabs when they are small and they let them grow in the small cage until they were a certain size and then they were taken to market.  Our guide travelled with ease along the canals and then brought us to an amazing cave. It was very dark as we entered, but I didn't see any bats.  The stalagmites were amazing, we were back out on the canal heading to another cave.  This time we parked our kayaks and entered a national park where there were ancient tribal paintings and carvings along the cave walls.  There wasn't much history available but they were at least 1000 years old.  At the top of the cave there was a beautiful view point over the mangrove forest.  We were back in our boats and decided to continue past the start point to our third cave before lunch.  To enter this cave we almost had to duck to get through the entrance.  Once through the cave we entered a open cavern that was incredible.  The guide told us it was called xxx xxxx xxxx , which meant round, enclosed cave.  It was quite a paddle back as we were going against the tide. We arrived back to find our fellow paddlers safe and sound and dried off. We were served a very nice lunch   and then we headed off to another national park to have a fresh water swim in the river.  The fresh water felt wonderfully refreshing after being splashed with salt water all day.