CHIANG RAI, THAILAND

Who needs an alarm clock when you've got a village full of squealing pigs, yapping dogs, crowing roosters, and peep-peep-peeping chicks all directly underneath the floorboards of the hut you're sleeping in? Combine that with an abnormally large wolf spider that somehow got inside my mosquito net, and you can bet that I was well awake before my morning Nescafe'.

For our second day of trekking, we left through the back of the Lahu village and headed down the mountain past rice fields and deep into the jungle. For much of the way, we followed a rain-swollen stream, often wading through it, until we came to a waterfall, where we took some obligatory "here I am in front of a waterfall" pictures. Kai led us further into the jungle, and then out again into an area of farmland that had recently been replanted with native jungle vegetation. Along the way, we passed some Karen tribe women roasting ears of corn (they gave us some, which wasn't bad), and a hermit in a shack roasting a rat (we didn't ask for a sample). Finally we came to the village where we had left the truck yesterday. Kai then drove us to a nearby hot springs, where we ate lunch and soaked for a bit in the warm spring water (well, it was a swimming pool that they piped some spring water into) before heading back to Chiang Rai.