Big city blues

The last day in Vientiane, the heat rising fierce, reflecting from the streets and the dust sitting windless above them. After the hills there's a fierceness to this place, the climate sapping remnant energy from bones, a sheen of dirty sweat dripping from the exertions of motion as we weave a course through the traffic piling up upon itself around each set of lights. Another change, the prevalence of cars and big pickup trucks upon the roads, bikes and scooters flittering around them, bicycles almost extinct other than those rented by riders brave enough to inhale their surroundings.

We find a place to sit and drink a coffee, air con chilled, a window upon the street beyond, almost deserted, 38 degrees and breathless, a suffocating arena to be braved rather than enjoyed. But not today. Today the trail of yesterday's thoughts, the tang of regret filtered through this changing eye. And I can't shake this cloak of melancholy but am unable to work out why. Maps change, dragons pushed further back, myths transform into paths, while unwritten pasts cast spells up in the present; translations of some golden age that never was. And time continues, unheeding our small infractions upon its surface.

Late afternoon a wander through a couple of temples, their doors locked against the outside world, the few pieces of ancient art which they contain, an old Buddha which survived 500 years of war, hidden from our eyes. And now there's only time to kill, walking towards the market, stopping for a bottle of beerlao white lager, a mistranslation I think, Weissbier, feeling it strip the layers of dust from my mouth, moving on.

Down by the river, claustrophobic horizons are caught faded and monochrome, an hour to sunset but the sun already departed into the cloaking murk. A couple of small boats fishing downstream, groups gathered along the shoreline, wading in the cool clear water, wishing I'd brought my trunks out with me but I can go in up to my knees, which I'm incapable of not doing, delighting in the relief from the heat still lingering upon the air. 

And here daily life continues, gathered within the moment and unweighed by memories of times past. Here, as the night begins to fall, the glow of smartphones, bathing motorbikes in the shallow water, a gathering of trucks, clouds of sand as one gets stuck, wheels rotating furiously and in vain, another having to pull it out, the silhouette of a single figure caught in headlights, running between, attempting to coordinate. And beyond this theater the lights of Thailand sparkle upon air and water, the last of the boats returning into view, the whine of its engine sounding nightfall as it passes upstream, fading into the lingering murk of a sunset which never was.

Later, sitting in a restaurant in an alley which proudly states, no Wi-Fi atop its menu board, a familiar sound grown alien these past weeks. Listening I finally recognise it, rain, splashing up in the canvas above us, calling me out into the street to feel the warm, wet, droplets fall up in me, a small relief against the captive heat which has enclosed these last days. And then it's gone, evaporated upon landing, neither trace nor scent that it had ever occurred as we walk back through the dark streets to prepare for departure.