Slow with pix

We're having trouble uploading photos. Yeeesh. We're working on it.

Meanwhile, a correction: It's UNESCO, not Unicef, whose World Heritage Team has designated Luang Prabang a "historic preservation site."

The Big Brother Mouse Web site is at www.BigBrotherMouse.com. Have a look.

There's a delay in getting Joe's wonderful photos up. But here's an excerpt from his journal.
"Remnants of grand staircases left by the French remain leading down to the river. It's perfectly peaceful here and brilliant green, with rich soil and craggy limestone. The only audible sounds come from boat motors which announce themselves gently and disappear just as delicately propelling the long, thin workhorse boats up and down the ever generous river. The boats fan out like tassles at the bottoms of the staircases, and it is a meeting of the cultures. Both remain unchanged. The boats are purely practical and the staircases elegant in their regularity but lumbering and self-important. Neither seems to have influenced the other."

Plans: we found a way to get to Luang Namtha and we'll go there Friday for five days. The Boat Landing, the eco-tourism lodge where we'll stay, arranges rides for patrons. So instead of a ten-hour bus ride it will be a nine-hour ride in a van with some other Boat Landing people. Sounds good. And it's just as well that the airport up there is closed. Foreign embassies urge their citizens to avoid Lao Aviation, the local airline. Its Chinese Yun aircraft are referred to here as "tuk-tuks with wings."