This was my favourite day of the trip so far. We rented a traditional Laos canoe and headed up the Nam Ou river and into the mountains. Heading upstream proved really strenuous on some stretches where the current was stronger...but we made it a couple of km's upstream and spent the afternoon on a sand bank with a picnic of bananas and biscuits!
There was not a soul in sight and the only sounds were bird calls, the chattering of monkeys and the echos of our own voices. The journey back down stream took a third of the time and towards the end we rode the rapids, as i was sitting at the front at this point i got drenched!