I normally wouldn't post this to our travel website. This conversation would usually just be between Tim and myself, most likely over some wine while we cooked dinner tonight. But curiosity has gotten the better of me. So I'm hoping one of the "deep fried tarantula" people can help me out.

We never book ahead when we travel. Note that I'm not really talking about plane tickets here - that's a interesting topic for discussion, but it will be the subject of another post. I'm talking about hotel rooms, bus tickets, boat tickets, train tickets, event admission... all that sort of stuff.

His name was Maximus, and it was said that he was the tallest elephant in all of Thailand. Certainly the was the tallest ele in Elephant Nature Park. Estimated to be in his 70s, Max had an elegance and grace about him that belied his enormous size and defied his many injuries.

On our walk down to the water last night, I noticed something was different in our little town. Houses that sit silent in the fall, winter, and spring months had movement inside them again. And instead of our path to the water being lit only by the light of the moon, the soft glow of lights from front porches showed us the way.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the second installment of the Golden Hedgehog Awards for Lodging, wherein we recognize the finest and most spectacularly wonderful places we stayed on our round-the-world trip! In this installment, we'll be covering award-winners #6 through #4.