My dream is to have a farm.

Kham; one of the few I have met while traveling that has spoken openly about dreams and has referred them to her heart. She is 26 years old. For seven days a week, she cooks, cleans, and even manages the family-owned restaurant, all while taking care of her "mama" and "papa", and holding onto her dream of a farm.

"Lao style," she tells me. "Four hectare, with room to grow vegetables," and not to forget, a house near the river where she can catch fish. The cost for a small house and land, probably about $2,000 to $3,000.

She laughed at me when I first told her its good to dream like this.

"I am crazy!", she said to me, with a beautiful smile and a laugh. "But its what I want in my heart."

I ask myself, how can I help? That is the question.

Maybe just in this conversation I have strengthened her hope, and maybe that is the best thing that I can do, but now I wonder, is there more? I would spend all my money in a course of days across the countryside if I knew a proper interpretation would follow through with the deed. I do not doubt, that this is a long process.

Mechanics and all aside, there is an analysis made by the heart that needs no other honesty. It is something you can feel and know through the eyes; and this defies scientific interpretation and mind mathematics. True dreams speak loud to those who listen.

There are ideas you will only hear if you listen, and only see if you search. This is the essence of dreams. Not mental ruminations of leftover meals that meet in your slumber, but hidden aspirations that appear in the glint of an eye. It is the dreamers of morning and evening, that by the coming of night, have owned the day.

Keep dreaming Kham. This is for you.

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[Too many thoughts have already been etched in ink upon paper. You are somewhat behind in my journey, so in a parenthetical, or bracketed form, here is a slight update.

I am in Laos.

I am walking in the footsteps of the Khmer kingdom, and not avoiding a phrasal cliche, the "mighty" Mekong, which is just 160 km north. For its historical importance, as well as its natural beauty of striated cliffs and hanging jungles, I think it is deserving of the word "mighty" in conjunction with the word "river."

Unfortunately, where I am in Vangvieng (on the Nam Song river), pastey drunken wildlife inhabit the banks and bars. Much of this waterway is left for exploration, but directly in front of me, is one of those traveler's checklist, "must do" experiences -- also known as, "doing" the river, in an inflatable tube... drunk.

(I was merely an observer).

Many beautiful sights suffer from to do lists, and the people that all too often follow them, are not really traveling; they are "checklisting"; (I probably just made that up). "Did you do the pyramids?" "Did you do the wats?" "Did you do the Taj Mahal?" "Did you do Khao San Road?" "Did you do the Louvre?" "Did you do the Nam Song?" This is a terrible lingo. Do not learn it. Do not "do" it. Seek truth in culture. Understand why a people cry, or where they worship, or how they build, or what they feel; but you must not, cannot, "do". This is the "checklisters'" lingo. This is for the guidebook-is-my-bible believers who only see culture when it falls into their lap.

We are all looking for paradise, but too often, when we find it, we change it. Good is never good enough.

I will find culture though. I will learn and I will be changed. It is not that only I have an ability, but merely that I use it.]

Happily conversing, learning, feeling, and dreaming,
Seth

(Be sure to check back soon, for what will hopefully be a picture of Kham).