We head north to Phongsali which takes longer than expected, 3 days to be exact! We take a small and fragile looking wooden motor boat up the Nam Ou River. The Nam Ou is beautifully untouched, no roads, signposts or even fences are to be seen. It's easy to spent hours in the boat watching the scenery whiz by and just when I'm thinking how isolated it is here, we pass a family throwing nets into the river and gathering up their catch with use of a hand-held net (how most people fish in Laos) or a herd of roaming buffalo cooling themselves in the water. We share the boat with several locals who we befriend and a handful of fascinating westerners: French-born Richard, who loves to swim in the river at any opportunity and takes a wonderfully free, 'I do what I want, when I want'attitude that every traveller should soak up a little; Phillip, who spent several years in the jungles of Peru trying to uncover medical and spiritual secrets from a shaman. Phillip is lovely, always wears baggy pants and attempts to describe the wonders of Ayahuasca to us. We also share the boat with two Russian's; one who owns a tea shop in Moscow, takes fine tea tours and is on a journey to find new producers in Laos and China, and the other who was a student of the previous Russian, and from what I could gather, made his money in Russia, decided to write a poetry book about existentialism and is gaining inspiration from the trip. I guess only fascinating people come this far north!