Two Days Down the Mekong

• Mekong, below Pakbeng
• 11:40
• 33°C, hot haze

The slow boat is a long wooden room full of strangers becoming card players. By hour three you know the river's grammar: sandbars, water buffalo, a fisherman appearing and vanishing like punctuation. Pim distributed dried mango to our whole row and became briefly famous.

• Mekong gorge, above Luang Prabang
• 17:50
• 30°C, dusk haze

Last hour of the second day, the Mekong narrowed between hills and the light went to smoke and rose gold. The engine note never changed. I shot until the frame was more memory than picture, then put the camera in my lap and just sat there, which is what rivers are for.

burning season softens every sunset here. beauty with a footnote

• Sakkaline Road, Luang Prabang
• 06:05
• 22°C, cool, lifting mist

Tak bat moves down Sakkaline Road at first light, a line of saffron against the dark shophouses. We knelt with sticky rice our guesthouse aunty had steamed at five, and she checked our technique before letting us out the door. You give quickly and look down. The camera stayed at my hip, one frame, no flash, from across the road.

• Wat Xieng Thong
• 09:20
• 31°C, bright, hot

The sim's roof sweeps almost to the ground in layers, like a bird settling. On the back wall the tree of life glitters in glass mosaic, red as a ripe rambutan. Novices crossed the courtyard with umbrellas against the sun and I got one frame before they saw me and grinned it into a different photo.

• Morning market, Luang Prabang
• 06:50
• 24°C, cool shade

Off the main street before seven: chillies in enamel bowls, river weed drying in sheets, a woman portioning jaew bong with a spoon worn to a sliver. It smells like my grandmother's kitchen with the volume turned up. I bought khao soi noodles for breakfast and photographed my own bowl before Pim finished it.