Photos by Jay Sturdevant

Evening descended upon the Ou river in Laos, and still we had not found shelter. Our hand-scrawled map of the river was not drawn to scale. The next village could be mere minutes away, or many miles yet.

Arms sore, I laid down my paddle across the front of our canoe. Looking up at the towering limestone cliffs that enclosed both sides of the river, I asked the question on everyone’s mind:

“What if they don’t let us stay?”

We had encountered only one other village that day. They dismissed us with a simple head shake. Whether out of mistrust or misunderstanding, we didn’t know.

The canoe rounded a bend in the river. The American, James, sat up suddenly at the stern. “There it is!” he shouted, pointing towards the river’s edge.

Along the shore, women in argyle sarongs bathed themselves in the murky river water. A lone man in shorts scrubbed his laundry against a boulder. Children chased each other along the water’s edge. One child spotted our approaching canoe and halted.

“Fallang!” the boy shouted out. Foreigners.

The villagers stopped and faced us. In the middle of our boat, Annike turned around towards Ellen. “Get the paper out.”

Ellen stopped bailing out water, then pulled out our Rosetta stone: a single piece of paper containing every phrase of Lao we knew.

“Sabaidee!” she read aloud. “Náwn yuu nîi dâi baw?” Can we stay here tonight?

The villagers continued staring for a moment. The man turned to the women. The women shrugged. He faced us again, evaluating the four canoeing backpackers in front of him. A radiant smile dawned upon his face. He dived into the river, swam out to the canoe, and towed us back to shore.