And another mini bus run through some of the most spectacular and beautiful landscapes that I've stumbled upon...really quite awesome hill country, a succession of impossibles created by a mad god...probably before the anti drug regime kicked in...but regardless of axis there's healing to be found in such beauty...as it tumbles regardless into mist and cloud, deft brushstrokes upon the canvas of the eye, or is that I?

And like those other places of rivers and mountains it's a hard land...the passing linearity of villages struggled against hill, road, river...occasional towns in frontier optimisms cast in neon glow dust; a hard land..but beautiful...

And here, in vang vieng, a travellers village of bars and eateries; variations upon a theme...but a wholly different vibe here, a place to drink and attempt to party, within enforced limits, reduced possibilities echoing what went before; the shadow of a memory...as so many places are, to others...