A few years ago a friend and I took a trip through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. To my delighted surprise, my card didn't work overseas and I ran out of money halfway through the first leg of the trip, Phuket turned out to be one of the slimiest places I've ever been, I was jumped in Krung Thep ('Bangkok') by five guys with knives, and other than studying Thai massage Chiang Mai didn't woo me the way I thought it would. Thailand wasn't all bad. The food was sinfully good, the non-Phuket beaches were sinfully gorgeous and the nightlife was simply sinful -- but one of my best experiences was sitting in a small temple one sunny afternoon with this man, a Laotian monk from a small village near Houayxai. He told me about the differences between Lao and Thai, which dishes I should try when I got to Laos and what his life had been like growing up. I told him where I was from, showed him on a map and described some of the food from my country. Then we just sat in the sun, watching people chat at the other tables, drinking water. Our eyes met and we looked at one another for along time, neither of us speaking. Somehow it wasn't at all weird or uncomfortable. Then I left. I told a friend about this and she said how wonderful it was to share such a special moment with a monk, but I just think that's exactly it: it shouldn't matter that he was a monk and it shouldn't matter what we did. That moment shouldn't be counted as special, otherwise I think one misses something: the existence in every other moment, which by implication isn't 'special', of the very thing within that moment that makes one set it aside in memory. But then, it's this that made me realize it in the first place...and, I do have this picture.