Mar 09-10 - We woke up with the deer still barking, and the gibbons calling in the distance. They have a sort of wailing cry that's quite eiree. We packed up camp, wolfed down a quick breakfast, and set off back towards the main river. Today we wound through huge bamboo forests, which towered overhead. The locals here make almost everything out of bamboo - machete handles from the roots, bowls from the larger stems, woven hammocks, walls, rooves and just about anything else you can imagine. In the middle of the morning, we hiked up another smallish hill - maybe a couple of hundred metres above the elevation of the main forest. We clambered up the laterite slopes and finally emerged at the summit. It was an amazing view. We could see up north into Laos, and south back into Cambodia - there were trees as far as you could see, for miles and miles, and a couple of rugged hills emerging from the canopy at odd intervals.

We came down from the hills, trekked through the jungle for a couple more hours, and then came to a camp by the river, where we'd be staying that night. We'd made pretty good time, walking about 10 or 12 kilometers, and arrived at around 15:00. It was an early finish to the day, but we weren't complaining! We strung up our hammocks again, and had a quick swim in the river, which was clear and cool. Sayang pulled together a 'special dish' of boiled fish and cabbage, which was even more terrible than his usual cooking, so I guess in that way it was a bit special! We narrowly avoiding choking on the bones, and then went for a little wander along the river banks. We came across a whole flock of lime-green butterflies, who were clustered around something on the ground. They were really interested in it, whatever it was, and didn't move off, even as we walked right by. We also saw a flock of giant hornbills fly ponderously overhead - honking, flapping creaking wings, and looking like they'd fall out of the sky if they stopped for even a second.

After the walk, it was back into the hammocks. We didn't have a huge amount of reading material with us, but we did have our Laos Lonely Planet, so we carried on with a little bit of planning - deciding what we'd do when we got across the border to Don Det. It was great to have an afternoon to chill out, relaxing in the heat; with hardly any noise, just birds, insects and the occasional buzz of the survey helicopter flying over. The clouds gently drifted overhead, and the sun set redly on the horizon. We managed to eat a bit of dinner, and hit the sack. For some reason, the mosquitoes were really out in force tonight. Although we were safe-ish in our zip-up hammocks, they knew we were there, and we could hear them buzzing outside and underneath us all night!

The next day, we woke up early to the sunrise. It had been a quieter night - we were closer to human habitation, so we hadn't had the same roaring levels of animal and insect noise as the night before. We had breakfast (the last of Sayang's cooking, thank God!) and then got in our two man inflatable canoe, to paddle back down the river. Sayong planned to meet us in three hours - at about 10:30 - and we set off early, with mist still hovering over the surface of the water.

Canoeing down the river was actually quite fun. We were going downstream this time, so if we got bored or tired of paddling, we could shelve the paddles and just drift along in silence for a bit. There was a lot more time to see the scenery on either bank, and we also saw a lot more birdlife - I guess they'd been scared off by the engine noise on the way up. We had a mixed reception from people up and down the river. Normally the kids would come out waving and shouting "Barang! Barang!" (Barang meaning Foreigner). One old boy came limping out of his hut shouting and cursing, though. We'll never know what he was on about, but his gesturing and spitting definitely didn't feel like a Cambodian form of welcome! It did make me wonder again what all these tribal people thought about us - bobbing down the river, in a canoe, not doing anything useful!

As the day wore on, it got hotter and hotter. The rapids weren't huge, but were still pretty fast-flowing, and it was fun to ride through them, although we almost got overturned on a half-sunken log at one point. At 11:00 Sayang still hadn't turned up, so we got more and more toasted, and continued on down - semi-wrapped in wet kikois to try and stop ourselves from getting too crisped! By the time we finally heard him coming around the bend, it was 12:45, and we were at the main river, only about 15 minutes from the launch site. "What happened?," we asked. "You said three hours." "yes, yes - three hours," he replied, as we beached the canoe on a sandbank to deflate. "No problem!"

We got back to Taveng twenty minutes later, and had lunch and an ice-cold coke at the local food stall. We'd definately got a bit pink in the sun, so we chucked on some trousers, and got on the motos to head back to Ban Lung. We asked Sayang to take us back to the Tribal Hotel ("No problem!"), but he hijacked us and took us back to the headquarters first, to fill out a questionnaire. Eventually we got back to bed and a cold shower, as well as some soap - this was great for us, and those around us too, no doubt! We had an ice-cold beer each, and our first really good meal for a few days. Kim had sorted out our bus tickets to Laos tomorrow, so we packed up and rolled into bed - again having that slightly strange feeling of being comfortable and flat...