Laos on my mind

Hello friends, happy to report I am no longer on a boat. The slow boat was worth doing, but halfway through the ride today I definitely wanted OFF. They packed way more people than was safe or prudent onto the boat and the seats were hard wooden benches about 6 inches wide.
Some of the stuff on this keyboard doesnt work, like apostrophes and question marks. Please excuse.
Im currently in Louang Phabang and its a nice little town. Theres a lot of colonial French architecture. Tomorrow I will explore more fully.
Im traveling with a couple women I met on the gibbon experience. We got here and there were literally no rooms left in town. We looked for an hour and a half. Finally we found a room with a double bed and one of us has to sleep on the floor. Im just happy we found a place. These traveling trials are much easier to bear when youre with other people.
More about the gibbon experience. Basically, some foreigners came in and are trying to help local people earn sustainable income from the forest without destroying the forest. They build tree houses 30 meters in the air and take tourists to the outer edges of the Bokeo nature reserve. We zip line around the forest, hoping to see animals, but mostly just having a good time in the jungle. The project discourages logging, encourages preserving gibbon habitat and gives local people a sustainable source of income. It seems like a pretty good deal. And zip lining through the jungle was really fun. Id heard rumblings about it from people along my trip, but didnt realize I could do it out of Houy xai, the border town I was in. I heard some girls talking about it. I showed up in the office in the morning and asked if I could go too and they said yes, much to my delight.
Laos seems pretty low key. This is the second biggest city and its definitely a one horse town. People here are really friendly too. There was a whole lot of nothing on the Mekong. We stopped several times to drop people off at remote villages. One guy got off the boat with a chicken on a leash. I think Laos is the least densely populated country in the region.
Im pretty tired and I feel slightly incoherent. More thoughts tomorrow.
TTFN,
Lauren