It’s an amazing country, the one I recently visited at the end of March. For two weeks I lived in a kind of 1984 world, where DoubleSpeak is an important element to every day life, propaganda is rife and cars with steering wheels on the left side share the road with cars with steering wheels on the right side.In two weeks I filled an entire journal with my thoughts, observations and feelings, with detailed descriptions and a thousand words trying to capture a fraction of the million things happening all around me. I wrote more than I would normally write in two months and yet was unable to put to the page most of the things that made the deepest impression on 
me for security’s sake: conversations with people, meetings, chance encounters even, names, dates, anything too specific.
The picture of apartment buildings in the capital sums up the majority of the experience for me. Every inch of space is packed with detail. You can walk as slowly as possible down the streets and still be unable to take it all in. In addition to the imagery, there are the noises: inevitably traffic, horns, screeching tires, but also people talking, shouting hello, chatting over tea tables on the sidewalk, a baby crying, someone yelling down from an apartment above, the tinkle of a bell on the wheel that crushes sugar cane to make juice.
The country is full of things crumbling: roads that were never built properly, buildings that were 
never maintained. Colonial ruins stand beside ancient rubble and Chinese concrete constructions tower above them all.
The scenery everywhere is spectacular, enchanting, almost magical, but it is nothing compared to the people there. I can’t speak highly enough of those I was fortunate enough to encounter. Waiting for a bus on the streets of another city, I practice my local language skills with a woman selling betel nut. We talk about our homes, our families, simple things, big smiles. Everywhere the taxi drivers, the fruit sellers, people on the street, teachers, parents, young people and old people are dealing with some of the worst economic conditions on earth and getting through each day with a smile.
I saw simple acts of kindness which are committed with a kind of routine nonchalance that inspired me. I found all kinds of examples of people with very little sharing with they had with others who had less. I’m under no idyllic impression that the humanity residing in this one particular country are somehow ideal or blessed, but I saw in my short experience there echoes of what I see in many people here in my work: a charity which truly comes from the heart.
It was amazing to explore ancient temples, to walk sun soaked stones amidst the ruins, to stroll the streets and explore the pagodas of the capital, but it was a blessing to meet and speak with the people I did, to find inspiration in their lives and words and most of all in their smiles.
