I don't know if Sartre was right, but if so this will be the clearest of all dispatches.

Sarah and I are recovering from a 16-hour food poisoning marathon that makes my discomfort in China seem like a minor case of the sniffles. The human intestinal tract is, what, like a mile long or something? Pretty incredible when you think about it, that it is designed in such a way that it can completely void itself of all contents in just a matter of seconds. If you had acheived the same clarity of vision I have you would realize that muck hosing at high velocities from both ends isn't gross, it's just good engineering.

It is a shame this had to happen. Sarah and I are in Laos, one of the best places we've visited on this trip, and I hate to soil it's reputation. Luang Prabang and Vientiane. This is Southeast Asia as it was meant to be.

Luang Prabang is a town of about 16,000 people in the middle of northern Laos. It's located at the confluence of the Mekong and Khan rivers, surrounded by mountains on all sides. It served as an imperial capital all the way up to 1975, when the communists took control of the country and the royal family was imprisoned in a cave, where they died a short time later. Luang Prabang was also a favorite town of the French during their colonization of Laos, and all of this history has created a delightful town today full of wats (temples), royal residences, and grand French colonial homes.

Our main goal was to relax. We intended to take a vacation. Although our travel during these last two months in Asia has been far easier than we expected, the act of moving every day from place to place, of constant touring and siteseeing, it wears you out a bit. We continue to be excited and engaged and energized, but we wanted to take a break before we burned ourselves out. Our butts were still sore from the motorcycles, and our ears still rang from speedboats. The quiet, slow pace of Luang Prabang was just the antidote.

Each of our days followed a similar pattern. We would wake up in the morning, wander through a few wats, stop for cooffee or pastries, maybe a fruit shake, then make it back to the guesthouse in time for a quick nap before a late lunch. Then some reading, a little shopping, maybe another wat, then another nap before dinner. Rough life, eh?

Our favorite part about Luang Prabang is the people. Everyone is smily and friendly. The pace is soft and gentle, none of the shouting and jostling of China nor the relentless salesmanship of Vietnam. All the women wear richly colored ankle-length skirts that manage to be both elegant and relaxed at the same time. This is the first asian country we have been in where the people say "Hello" in their own language rather than in English. "Sa-bah-DEE!" we hear again and again when we enter a store or pass someone on the street. I like that.

One day, a group of us hired a truck to take us to a waterfall about an hour's drive outside of town. Sarah, I, the three Israelis from our speedboat, and a nice Austrian couple we'd met at our guesthouse sat in the back of the truck, happily bouncing along the gravel road, passing through villages of stilt houses and thatched roofs. Somehow the subject of what day of the week it was came up. The Austrians firmly believed it was Sunday, and I was campaigning for Monday. One of the Israelis wasn't sure, but he tried to count forward from the last time he knew the day of the week which was a Wednesday a few weeks ago when he had taken a flight, but he kept forgetting what he had done since then so he was never able to work his way all the way back to today. After much discussion and heated debate, by vote we settled on Monday. Days of the week have very little significance when travelling anywhere in Asia, but it seemed appropriate that we should be so utterly lost in time here in Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang is also the most spiritual town we have been in. There are 32 wats in this small place, and most are still active with monks and worshippers. All Lao Buddhist males are expected to become monks for at least some period in their life, and most do a 3-month stint in their late teenage years, so the streets here are packed with young boys in their bright orange robes. Many are seen following -- literally and figuratively -- in the footsteps of old, bent monks.

The wats themselves are beautiful. Each is a large compound with living quarters, a temple, a library, and other buildings. Inside are the gold Buddhas and artifacts, but what really struck me was the outside. Glittering gold decorations adorn the walls. The roofs are mutl-teared red tile. Spiky, gold hooks rise up from the edge of the roof, both at the top and along the sides. These hooks, calle jao faa, are said to catch evil spirits that try to descend from the sky. In China, temples belong to the tourists and the trinket vendors, but here in Laos they are clearly places of worship.

Things were coasting along just fine. We were having ourselves a nice little vacation until something called "deer steak" shattered our idyll.

The restaurant looked nice enough. Linen tableclothes. Nice china. The silverware was even good and wasn't imprinted with "Lao Aviation" like the silverware at other places in town. A band was playing traditional Lao music. They were terrible, but since they weren't cooking I figured it didn't matter.

Wanting to try some of the local food, I ordered deer steak off the "local specialties" section of the menu. The meat came. It was a little rare but it tasted good. I ate almost the whole thing. Gentleman that I am, I shared some with Sarah. We both had curious stomach aches after dinner, but they eased during our walk through town.

Five or six hours later laying in bed, I broke out in a sweat. Something wasn't right. Soon after, I started doing that swallowing thing you do when your body is saying "nausea coming" and your mind is saying "please, no!" At that point, it was really all over, just a waiting game for the first sprint to the bathroom. Then came the ab workout. One set of 10 reps every hour, all night. For the sake of women and children in the audience I will spare you the details.

About 8 AM as I was returning from my spiritual journey, it hit Sarah. Same pattern. Not quite as sudden, but equally unpleasant.

If there is one good thing about food poisoning, it is that it comes and goes quickly. By 10 AM I was keeping Sprite down, by noon crackers. We knew we had to get back to Bangkok to meet Karna and Mike, Sarah's sister and brother-in-law, but at this point 12 hour busrides were out of the question, so set out in my Sartian stupour to rustle up some plane tickets. Choice of airlines was easy; state-owned Lao Aviation is the only one that flies domestically. Getting tickets was the hard part.

Like many tourist services in Laos and Vietnam, prices for plane tickets are quoted in US dollars. So before I could by tickets I had to first find a bank in Luang Prabang that would change my travellers checks into US dollars cash. I went to the first bank. Closed for lunch. Then a long, hot walk across town to the next bank. This one was open but would only change into Laotian Kip. That didn't do me any good, so it was off to a third bank. Same problem. Finally back to the first bank, hoping it would be open by now. I was doing on a city-wide scale the same thing all men do when shopping for groceries at a supermarket. . . first to aisle 1 for chips, then to aisle 10 for beer. Then back to aisle 1 because you forgot the salsa, then back to aisle 10 because you forgot the soda. On and on. Back and forth. Fine in an airconditioned grocery, but wholly unwelcome on a steaming hot afternoon in Laos with my less than stable digestive tract.

Bank 1, where I had tried to start in the first place, said they would give me US dollars. But when I signed my travellers checks the teller rejected them because the signatures didn't match. I have a fairly stable personality, but apparently my wild and spontanous side manifests itself in my signature because I loooked at them and, yep, they were wildly different. I begged and pleaded, gave her the whole sob story about my sick dying wife back in the guesthouse and my epic struggle in the hot afternoon sun. She called her manager over and they agreed to give it another go. I signed my name some more, but the harder I concentrated the more varied my signature became. Eventually, because I just wouldn't go away, they agreed to cash the travellers checks on the condition that I leave them my e-mail address and a copy of my passport.

Next I went to the Lao Aviation office. It was unlocked, but no one was around. I slid open the door and stepped inside. Still no one. I walked over the desk and sat down. Silence. This did not speak well towards their security measures.

After some time, a nice guy walked in off the street and introduced himself as the sales agent. I explained what I needed -- to fly to Vientiane and then on to Bangkok. He said, "No problem," which I should have learned by now has a much different meaning in Asia than it does in the US.

Lao Aviation only has one computer, and it sits on a desk somewhere at the home office in Vientiane, which did us very little good being presently in Luang Prabang. For some reason, my agent decided to book the Vientiane - Bangkok flight first. This required a series of phone calls, then waiting for another series of calls that came in to a phone on a different desk. At one point he scribbled something on a scrap of paper and sent a guy on a scooter with the message. The scooter guy disappeared for a while, then returned with a different scrap of paper, which led to another series of phone calls and -- finally -- I ended up with two handwritten tickets for passage the next day from Vientiane to Bangkok. We were halfway there!

Well, not quite. When the agent got around to checking the first leg from Luang Prabang to Vientiane he learned that the flight was full. This was not good, because I soon learned that the only thing more logistically complex than purchasing a Lao Avaition plane ticket was cancelling a Lao Aviation plane ticket. More phone calls, scooter rides, and the works. The sweat began to build up on my agent's forehead.

To pass the time I flipped through a copy of their in-flight magazine. This issue had precisely three articles. One was on Lao music, which was interesting. The next article, for whatever reason, was on Maccu Piccu, the ruins located in South America about as far as possible as one could be from Laos. Scariest of all, though, was the third article that detailed at great length the maintanance history of each of Lao Aviation's 12 airplanes. I assume the goal of the article was to impress upon the reader how carefully maintained their fleet was, but reading this article had the opposite effect. Airline safety is one of those things that a real airline shouldn't have to talk about. The minute the issue is raised, you begin to think they are covering something up, the same way Clinton going out of his way to specify "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" made you kind of think that he had. Worse, most of the planes had histories like:

"Manufactured in the former Soviet Union, 1967. Sold to China CAAC airlines 1971. Sold to Laos 1989. . . "

Miraculously, hours later, I ended up with tickets. We would have to spend a night in Vientiane, but we were booked all the way through to Bangkok and would arrive in time to meet Karna and Mike. I crawled back to the hotel, dragging water and crackers, and we spent the rest of the day in bed.

Today we recovered enough to see a few more sites before leaving town. We toured the old imperial palace. Small by Asian imperial palace standards, but nice. Then it was off to the airport where a handwritten "Out of Order" sign taped to the X-ray machine awaited us. For once I hoped the security guard would thoroughly search my carry on bags, but he just waved us through with a smile. As we waited for our flight to be called, I eyed my fellow passengers one by one, trying to see if any looked like terrorists.

We walked out onto the tarmac to board our plane and it was with great relief that I saw the pride of the fleet -- a 2 engine ATR 72 prop plane that had been purchased (new!) from France within the last decade. The flight was uneventful. Smooth. Pretty. No hijacking, terrorism, or even dangerous flying as far as I could tell. Lao Aviation seemed like a real airlines and not like the deathtrap I had been expecting.

For every good thing we had heard from fellow travelers about Luang Prabang, we had heard bad about Vientiane. I expected a drab, rundown, junkheap of a city. I stepped off the plane with a critical eye, but all I saw was an empty, fairly nice airport. This was their capital city, the busiest airport in the country, and it receives a whopping 6 flights a day.

We picked a hotel out of our guidebook and hopped a cab into town. I was just settling into my seat, watching the sleepy outskirts of the city go by, when our driver announced we were there. Downtown. I've been in airports that are bigger than this city.

Now, it is a few hours later and we've had a chance to explore. I must say, I like what I see. It's just a sleepy slow town set on a wide bend of the sleepy slow Mekong. Sure, it has a few boring communists buildings, but it's also speckled with glittering wats and more than a few colonial remnants. Personally, I have a problem disliking any capital city that's laid back enough dogs can sleep on its main street. I wouldn't necessarily make Vientiane the major destination of a trip, but it is certainly a good enough place to spend a day or two.