Tham Lot Cave is 9 km from the town of Soppong (a.k.a. Pangmapah) which lies midway between Pai and Mae Hong Song, both of which are popular tourist destinations in northwest Thailand. The forests around Lot Cave offer good and easy birding. The cave itself is home to thousands of Pacific Swifts which emerge every morning and return at dusk. Exploring the cave and viewing the returning swifts are fairly popular tourist attractions. The immediate area around the cave is a mixture of forest, rice fields, and bamboo which contains a good number of common Thai birds.
The best birding area is the forest which lies along both sides of the road back to Soppong. This road is forested for the first 5 km from Tham Lot village and contains many side roads and trails. This area is excellent for woodpeckers. Recently one birder saw 11 species of woodpeckers here in only a few days. Rufous-bellied Woodpecker (Picoides hyperythrus) is quite easy here and usually seen about 4-5 km (in the last kilometer of forest) from Tham Lot village along the road to Soppong.
Any Thai travel guidebook will have information on Soppong and Tham Lot. Basically you take a bus from Chiangmai\’s Arcade bus station to Pai and then on to Soppong. This takes 5-6 hours. From Soppong you take a motorcycle taxi the 9-10 km to Cave Lodge which has a dorm and bamboo huts available. This area has some malaria, and visitors should take reasonable precautions.
The second longest known cave in Thailand, is Tham Mae Lana, which is 12 kilometres long. This was explored by Australian expeditions between 1984 and 1986. The other caves in the area which are over 1 km long include Tham Nam Lang Cave (8,550m), Tham Bung Hu Cave (4,442m), Tham Pha Mon Cave (4,050m), Tham Seua/Tham Lom Cave (3,100m), Tham Susa Cave (2,617m), Tham Huai Kun Cave (1,747m), Tham Pang Kham Cave (1,370m) and Tham Plah Cave (1,365m). Spirit Well (Nam Bua Phi), a spectacular large collapse doline and one of the largest known natural holes in Thailand, is south of the H1095 road. It is more than 200m across and 90 to 130m deep. It was first descended, by the Australians, in 1985.