Cow bells jingle and echo among the mountains. High bells returned by resounding resonance. Wind blows the music around as it plays amongst the trees and rocks. The folds of mountain and hill in the distance become the waveform of the bells as they dangle and jangle and clink and toll. In the distance, the music is muted by the heat haze.

Horns, whistles and rings of bike bells as manoeuvre through the jostling crowd of the dusty main street. At midday, the whole place squelches into slow motion, but everyone is still around you, sludging through thick air. Wood carts pulled by lean, dark-skinned, weathered old men. Ungainly, busted, ancient trucks and pickups totter on weak suspension, their back-ends overloaded with baskets and crates and sacks of goods.

All distant sounds are deadened by the heat and haze. Shimmering rays add modulation and vibrato to anything that does get through. The hum and buzz of insects swells and falls like gentle waves across the fields of rice carpeted across the almost dry riverbed. Murmurs rise up from hunched bodies half-lost in the thin green grass. They trundle along, tending to the rice, weeding and cleaning the neat rows. We clamber aboard a small vessel manned by an old gentleman. His clothes are ragged and his skin is thick and wrinkled like old leather. He pushes us across with long, slow movements of a large paddle at the back. The gentle laps of water at the sides pierce the silence with a comforting rhythm.