The last week or so has seen some full on travel from us. We took the slow boat up the Mekong river - a two day voyage from Luang Prabang to Huayxai, with an overnight stop in the village of Pakbeng. Cruising upriver at a gentle pace was a wonderful way to travel, watching the landscape slip by. It was our third boat trip of the journey, the other two being Shanghai to Osaka, and along the Yangtze river. On the Mekong we were occassionally passed by speedboats that did the same trip in about 7 hours. But these little deathtraps, that held about a half dozen people wearing lifejackets and crashhelmets, were not for us. Zipping upriver in a wasplike earsplitting motorboat that looked ready to flip and disintegrate at any wrong turn was not for us.

The slowboat always arrived behind scehdule and after dark, so we had to settle into whatever guesthouse we were herded into. The first in Pakbeng was a flophouse where I had to put a padlock on the door to lock it. But for $2 a night what do you expect? The second place in Huayxai was twice as good - $4 a night - but at least we had a toilet and a hot shower in our room.

So we arrived in northern Laos again, and our next stop was the rainforest preserve.