Secret Royalty On Tour

The more time I spend in Laos, the more I realise how many worlds can sit quietly on top of each other.

Here, animism – Satsana Phi, the spirit religion – threads itself through everyday life. Even in a country that is mostly Buddhist, the belief in phi (spirits who inhabit rivers, mountains, rice fields, trees, families, clans, villages) never left. It just lives alongside everything else.
A temple might face a stupa. A monk might be called on to cast out a troublesome spirit. A shaman might divine what the modern world can’t explain. And all of this is completely unremarkable to the people who live it.

There’s something profoundly grounding about a culture that assumes the world is alive and watching.
That every river has a guardian.
That every mountain has a memory.
That every creature – even the scruffiest dog – carries a spirit worth honouring.

And then I think about what we worship in the West.

Productivity.
Certainty.
Efficiency.
Achievement.
The endless self-improvement project.

We don’t bow to trees.
We don’t offer rice to the river.
We don’t believe our dogs are small, furry guardians who keep our spirits anchored (even though anyone who’s ever loved a dog knows this is objectively true).

Being here reconnects me to something I forget too easily: gratefulness for the living world, and a softness toward forces I can’t completely understand but can absolutely feel.

Maybe the point of my Secret Royalty adventures is remembering that we’re not here to dominate the world – we’re here to belong to it.