Mae Hong Son to Ban Tham

The rooster starts at 2am. Visions of strangling him.

We get up in the mist for the morning market. Just after 7, it's been going on for hours and most households have already done their daily shop. We do rediscover rotis - this time with egg, condensed milk, sugar and extra margarine for good measure. Washed down with several cups of instant coffee, nothing to stop us for the day bar vague nausea.

The road is again lovely. Unfortunately the standing fall comes from Ul deciding we won´t make a bend - or are going the wrong way. I gently topple and snap the clutch, and randomly lose my new found confidence and enjoyment. The rest of the ride is an anxious crawl for no objective reason. We are briefly harassed at a view point by a betel chewing grandmother with Dracula stained mouth who pursues us with hibiscus stuffed pan pipes.

Happily arrived in the travellers' paradise of cave lodge for lunch. Suddenly we love traveller's places, which after all, cater for people like us. Our stilted bungalow complete with balcony looks over trees and the river. There's good food, adverts for adventure travel, potential cliental lolling prostrate in hammocks, and a large, comfortable bed. And no rooster.

The afternoon under a mountain, where the river flows right through with vast caverns and twists and turns in the darkness on either side, where shadows throw images of gossiping greek gods. The raft is bamboo and the guide through the underworld a waist high girl with a kerosene lamp. The water is full of large grey tourist fed fish waiting for you to put a foot wrong. The caves are very impressive, near empty, and pitch black apart from the few fairy kerosene lamps bobbing around throwing up visions of grand formations.

At dusk hundreds of thousands of swifts dart from a spiralling mass into the cave for the night. The sky is thick with them. The bats, billed as exodusing at the same time, fail to turn up.