When I went to Thailand in 2011 with my girlfriend we also 
visited Laos. We traveled the Mekong River by boat and upon landing in Luang Prabang we went back upriver to Pakbang, a village along the bank where we’d stayed the night on the trip downriver.
When we left Pakbang a day or so later, we decided to go over the hills to the Thai border near the province of Nan. That decision had us waiting in an informal bus stop by the side of the road for nearly four hours. We whiled away the time by watching people fish in the river, interacting with locals and some passing tourists, helping people with their bags as they clambered 
aboard songthews, and talking to a little girl who lived nearby.
The girl came to join us from the house beside the station and tried her Laotian on our poorly tuned ears. Even our Thai is weak, and although Laotian is a related language, she didn’t understand me when I spoke and I think she found it impossible to believe that I couldn’t understand her. As far as she was concerned, she was speaking clearly enough, what could possibly be wrong with us that we didn’t know what she was saying?
When she left us and went back to her house I thought that was the last we’d see of her. Instead she returned with some dog-eared children’s books and handed them to me. I don’t know if she was mimicking the way her mother had taught to speak, trying to help the weak-minded foreigner, or if she took my attention as a chance to share her books.
I took the books and began to point to pictures and talk about them, although I couldn’t read the written language. She sat beside me and talked and we bonded over our mutual incomprehension while my girlfriend sat across from us and took several pictures. This is one of my favourite moments, for she is painstakingly explaining something to me in Laotian and I am listening attentively. South East Asia was filled with such beautiful moments, and I often return to when our most pressing concern was the arrival of the bus and the entertainment of a child.
