A Picture of Laos
We are walking through a winding courtyard which, as far as I can tell from all the monks moving quietly around us, must lead to a temple. “Here it is!” my friend calls out to me in my reverie, so I turn. Ah! The coffee shop. In my meditative state, I’d walked right past it. It’s a cool spot – an effortlessly cool spot decorated with a lifetime’s accumulated objects and charm. We have a brew, before jumping on his bike, to drive along the Mekong. Life is good.
We chat as we drive, our voices over the buzz of the moped’s tiny motor, and to my left the river glides by, with views of Thailand on the other side. To my right, doorways and buildings blur into one another. I wonder what I don’t know about their inner workings, what lives unfold just out of view.
Twenty minutes later: “Another coffee?” We’ve come to a stop in an alleyway, hemmed in by scooters, some kind of garage. “Sure, but… where?”
As it turns out, the garage is also a coffee shop. We hunker down at a table so small and so tucked against the wall that it doesn’t seem possible it can function as a sitting area – and yet it does. Delightfully so. We chat some more, and he points out that the owner is a collector of old cassette players, with several of his pieces covering one of the walls. And slowly I begin to see. A picture is emerging. This is Laos. Quietly unassuming. Deep. Curious. Otherwordly.
Slow – a word often used to describe Laos. And yet ironically, I’m here to see the Chinese-funded high-speed train which now connects a large portion of the country. Journeys that once took six hours over broken roads now take a couple by train. It’s sleek, efficient, and entirely user-friendly. No notes.
Later on, sitting in the train, as Laos rushes by outside the windows, I dive back into Henri Mouhot’s journals from his explorations circa 1860. He wrote of trekking through Laos on elephant-back just 165 years ago—only five or six generations past. I marvel at how much has changed.
He wrote:
“But it is pleasant to the man devoted to our good and beautiful mother, Nature, to think that his work, his fatigues, his troubles and dangers are useful to others, if not to himself. Nature has her lovers, and those alone who have tasted them know the joys she gives. I candidly confess that I have never been more happy than when amidst this grand and beautiful tropical scenery, in the profound solitude of these dense forests, the stillness only broken by the song of birds and cries of wild animals; even if destined here to meet my death [which he does], I would not change my lot for all the joys and pleasures of the civilised world.”
I resent the word civilised (no surprise, some of the book hasn’t aged well), but I deeply connect with the sentiment. Just the day before, I’d found myself nestled within karst peaks in the silence of it all, sipping rice wine that we had been gifted in a Khmer village along our hike.
But beyond the nature—so striking—the true highlight of Laos, always, is the people.
Spending the day in Mrs. Noy’s home, in a riverside village reached by boat, was one of those rare, grounding experiences. We cooked over an open fire, talked about what it means to be women in this world, shared our stories of motherhood—our lives so different, yet overlapping in the most human of ways. A day that will live with me forever.
Later that evening, I sat with a monk at a nearby temple. After bringing an offering, I was invited to ask questions. I was humbled to find that this revered figure, cloaked in peace and ritual, carried the same questions I do. The same ache for meaning. The same quiet suffering we all hold as we navigate this strange, beautiful human experience.
This trip reminded me what it feels like to be truly free out in the world again—far from the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of home, yet somehow instantly connected, welcomed by strangers who felt like old friends. It was a joy to travel here again. And the gift of travel lingers. It leaves its mark on me like a palimpsest—each journey layering new meaning over the old, never erasing, further adding to who I am.
