22nd June 2004.

In the late morning I awoke, I must have slept twelve hours the least, but refreshed and ambitious for the anicent fastness of Luang Prabang - I was impatient to wander.

But the landlady was waiting.

How she knew I never knew but Chittin grabbed me as I sallied forth with the wind in my sails among the day and furled them shut.

'You teacher,' she insisted, 'This I know'. She drew me to her bed where with snotty young child she slept at night, guarding her foreign charges with fierce and, as I was later to find out, mad indominatability.

She pushed me down, and then scattered a wealth of papers beside me upon the rough hewn bed and then triumphantly produced a piece of waving paper which she insisted that I read.I then realised her desire, she wanted me to help her with her CV. She ached for a job in distant Bangkok.My heart plunged, knew she not Bangkok? Clearly not, but I listened patiently and learned her tale nonetheless.

Chittin ran this tiny, clean and proud guest-house where she had so generously allowed me to stay, and next door she also ran a clunking internet cafe. She exchanged money (illegally), she ran a laundry, she gave work to those that would and held degrees in accountancy, economics and touchingly, gender issues.

She and her sister alone had built up her life while her husband lay in the cold earth, I could not bring myself to ask how that had come to be. She wanted me to help her, so that she could get her dream job of being a tourist agent in Bangkok, where she could earn much money and support her entire family on the fortune to be won there.

Chittins urgency and her compassion, her simple and dogged determination, to achieve here what she had already had, to seek more and to further both her old and young family touched me; how could I refuse? In less than 24 hours of arriving in Luang Prabang I was working, but who can say when such help is so earnestly and honestly asked for? I sighed and agreed and held out my pregnant bag of overipe laundry, she promised it would be ready the next day.

I still don't know how or why she knew I was a teacher of rough sorts, but once more, in three different countries now, people seemed to know something of me that I do not know myself perhaps. As I left, her CV in my hands, realising that I had this task first to do before sallying forth into this ancient town, I began to brood among the long stepped strides beneath me.

I seem to travel this world differently to most others, where they see places I see people within those places. Where they see craft or artefacts, I see the toil, the human history behind their work and the dirt beneath their nails. Where they bargain shrilly for a few copper pence, I willingly pay a price well beneath either their or my capacity; some are proud to beat a few paltry pence from the impoverished and the needy whereas I willingly give that which I would not even notice disapearing. I smiled ruefully as I remembered Gurt, on the slow boat, admonishing me for not driving a harder bargain; I had failed at the first hurdle.

In my reverie, I remembered suddenly back in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the rose sellers, the Karen and the Achen or the garland sellers; I would raise my empty arms and smiling say no, for whom would I buy a rose with this dark and empty heart? They seemed to understand, every night they would try again, for we became a game together:

'No!...Oh, Go on!...But I have no need!...Are you sure! Are you sure you're sure?'

And we would lock smiles fastly. They would touch and squeeze my arm, and if I were with food, I would invite them to share the plate. They would always decline me as I had them, and always they would smile at me, the Karen witht their blakckened betel teeth, smiling at their tinier children, some strapped snoring loudly on their backs,others gazing up in snotty wonder at the strange, moon faced Ferang floating high in orbit above their oh so seriously young faces.

IÂ awoke from the reverie and paid attention to the newly moulded day unfruling beneath me.

It's so peaceful here in Luang Prabang. The French were always ruthless bastards as colonial msaters, yet somehow such sadistic indifference to their subjects plight is not reflected in their atitude to the local architecture. Borrowing ancient influnece from the Buddhist temples, the Fench colonial style mingles freely and easily on the eye, smoothing and insinuating lazily between the centuries old wooden structures, built and rebuilt time and again.

As I step past, across the road, a young boy of twelve or so splits wood with a mallet and a machete, smiling and cheerful at his own skill. Old and young women alike beckon me to sample their silks, their intricate carvings of chessboards and Buddhas, their freshly carved fruits.

There's an easy smile pace here though. Nobody is hungry, and although one of the least developed places in the world, it bears no resemblance to the hungry ribs of parts of Africa or the squalid destitutions of the Lima favaellas. Everyone is chatting, gossiping on haunches, small children run gleefully amok, and young women draped like silk over vespas, a parasol covering their delicate skin, slowly pass by, grinning at the stranger like alabaster figurines of timeless and effortless beauty.

It's good to be stared at again, I'd forgotten the enldless amusement that a foreigner can bring to a land. Knots of small children chase my every step, and on occasion I turn stutteringly grinning, so that they scatter in hysterical laughter and wonder at such a fine and unexpected game on this otherwise ordinary day.

Down narrow alleways, dark tent awnings strung between the low sloped roofs of the colonial buildings and temple walls, one or two toothed women beckon you with a full pipe to sample the delight of opium beneath their canvas. May'be later. And always and everywhere, the same playful friendliness as the Laotians touch and groom one another with smiling delight.

Whether scooping fish from the Khan or the Mekong with line and tackle wrapped around toilet roll carboard, or checking crab pots strung beneath bent thick strings of bamboo stuck within the loam of the forest banks or youths chasing one another squealing in races or contests of wrestling with their musical laughter, Luang Prabang is a place to repair the soul; a haven deep within the scrabbling jungle, at the confluence of the mighty Mekong and her meeker sister the Khan.

And easing the day with smoke Laotian tea, scribbling notes from the Edge, scores of orange robed monks, their rank given by bright coloured sashes draped over only one shoulder denoting what? - I would have to find out what the various ranks meant, but that was for later, for now their evening shadow heads bobbing beneathy umbrellas and dancing among their colours was a feast for the eye and a tonic for the heart.

But it's the first morn here, and truth be told more close to afternoon following my late uprising, but nevertheless I sense that Luang Prabang is a heart filled with stories, of triumphant human spirits, of happiness and moments, sadness and gladness all polished together in vast orchestration just waiting for me to stop and listen and take heed.

As is the world the whole world over.

yechydda,