Secret Royalty On Tour

I have been thinking about how our cultures are shaped not just by history or ancestors or politics, but by the literal land we grow up on. The geography under our feet writes a quiet script within us. We walk it every day without noticing.

I never knew I was born an island girl until now. I take it for granted that whichever direction I wander, the sea will eventually catch me. It is the place we go to reset, to rinse off the week, to get the photo that proves we remembered to breathe.

And then I come here, to landlocked, river-run Laos and realise how differently a culture tunes itself when there is no coastline waiting at the edge to greet it.

Here, the river is not an edge but a corridor. It doesn’t open out into possibility; it pulls you along its current. The rhythm is linear, seasonal, neighbourly. People time their days to ferry crossings, fish migrations, the colour of the water after rain.

So then – my sense of freedom is geological. A cultural accident. A gift I didn’t earn from a coastline I take for granted.

The Laotians set their watches to water that moves in one direction; we New Zealanders set ours to tides that come back for us twice a day. Same element. Completely different psychology.

And here I am, perched by the river in Nong Khiaw, having this neat little revelation about how rivers shape a culture, only to remember I don’t actually live near the sea anymore. I live beside the Arrow River in Central Otago, a glinting, well-behaved ribbon compared to the Mekong’s great, heaving body.

Funny. I had to come all the way to landlocked Laos to realise I have quietly become wedded to a river and all it gifts me. Maybe the land starts shaping you long before you bother to read the map.