The air on Don Det in April is a physical presence. It doesn’t just surround you; it presses in, a heavy, wet blanket of heat that saps the will from your bones and leaves the world moving in a slow, dreamlike trance. This was the heart of the Phi Mai festival, the Lao New Year, a time of purification and renewal where the entire country becomes a water fight, a joyous, chaotic attempt to wash away the old year. But beneath the laughter and the drenching, there is an older, more potent current that runs through the 4000 Islands. It’s a place where the veil between the worlds feels thin, where the spirits of the land and river, the phi, are never far from the business of the living.
We were living then at the Paradise Guesthouse, a collection of simple bungalows perched on the banks of the mighty Mekong. It was run by Papa Foy, the patriarch of the family, a man of quiet strength and, as we would learn, profound shamanic abilities. Our immediate neighbors were another local family, and their son, Pau, was a gentle, unassuming boy of sixteen or seventeen. He was a fixture of the gentle, daily rhythm of life. We’d see him studying his schoolbooks in the shade of his family’s home, or helping his mother hang laundry, or laughing with his cousins. He was part of the landscape, as unassuming and steady as the river itself.
Pau in Decline
Which is why his sudden decline was so jarring. It didn’t happen gradually. It was as if a switch had been flipped. One day he was there, the next, he was gone, lost in a deep, impenetrable coma. His family, their faces etched with a fear that went beyond ordinary sickness, bundled him into a boat and took him upriver to the hospital in Pakse.
For days, we heard nothing. Life at the guesthouse went on, but a pall had fallen over the entire neighborhood. The laughter from next door was silenced. Then, they returned. The doctors in Pakse had been baffled. They had inserted IVs and a feeding tube, had run their tests and scanned his brain, but found no physical cause, no injury, no infection. They had no answers, and thus, no cure. Their final, grim advice was to take him home to die. It was a matter of spirit, not just medicine. To die away from home meant his spirit would be lost, a wandering, lonely thing. His ashes would belong to a foreign temple. He needed to be on the soil he knew, so his essence could find its way to his family’s that, the home temple where his ancestors rested.
Home to Die
So, his family built a hut for him. It was a small, simple structure of bamboo and thatch, erected swiftly next to their home, overlooking the vast, cracked-earth expanse of the dry-season rice fields. This is where they laid his unresponsive body. And this is where they performed the first act of spiritual protection: they surrounded the hut with the sai sin, the sacred white string. This string, blessed by monks, is believed to bind the 32 kwan—the subtle, spiritual organs that comprise the human soul—to the body, preventing them from wandering away in a time of vulnerability. It was a quarantine of the spirit.
The local shamans began their work. We would hear the faint, rhythmic cadence of their chanting in the still, afternoon air, see the smoke from their offerings curling into the hazy sky. They were trying to expel the phi, the malevolent spirit everyone now believed had taken residence in Pau’s body, pushing his own consciousness out. But day after day, there was no change. The hut, with its white string and its silent occupant, became a somber monument to a fading hope.
Phi Mai Laos
The peak of the Phi Mai festivities arrived. Seeking a reprieve from the heaviness that had settled over our corner of the island, Donna and I joined the celebrations at the island’s central temple. The air was thick with the scent of frangipani and incense. Laughter and shouts echoed as people gently poured scented water over the hands of elders and then gleefully drenched each other with buckets. For a few hours, the pervasive worry was washed away in that torrent of joy.
But the real world was waiting. The walk back to Paradise was through the harvested rice fields, the stubble of dried stalks crunching under our feet. The sun was a merciless hammer on the back of our necks. We were coated in a slick mixture of river water, sweat, and sunscreen, our clothes clinging to us unpleasantly.
“Our turn for the shower,” Donna said, her voice thick with the heat.
Cooling Off
I just nodded, too hot for words. We collected our little basket—containing a sliver of soap, a bottle of shampoo, and two thin, worn towels—and made the short trek to the back of the property. The shared bathroom was a concrete block building open to the elements, situated right on the edge of the rice fields.
It was large enough for the two of us. The choice was a cistern of cool, still water—a large, concrete tank filled by a pump from the river—or a single, rust-spotted showerhead that dribbled the same water. Donna, a pragmatist, turned the shower knob. I, preferring the shock and ceremony of it, dipped a plastic scoop into the cistern. The first pour over my head was a blissful shock, a moment of pure, physical relief. We washed the day from our skin, the grime and the salt swirling down the drain in the center of the floor.
And then, it happened.
Frozen
It was not a gradual cooling. It was an invasion. One moment I was relishing the cool water, the next, a cold so profound and absolute seized me that my very breath froze in my lungs. It was not the cold of water or ice; it was the cold of the void, a deep-space chill that radiated from my core, flash-freezing my blood and sinew. A violent, uncontrollable shudder wracked my body, my teeth clattering so hard I thought they would shatter. My legs gave way, no longer my own. I crumpled to the wet, concrete floor, curling instinctively into a fetal position, a desperate, animal attempt to conserve a heat that was no longer there.
“Lance?” Donna’s voice was distant, muffled by the roaring in my ears. Her hand on my shoulder felt like a brand of dry ice. “My god, you’re freezing!”
I couldn’t speak. I could only shudder. With a tremendous effort that felt like moving through concrete, I allowed her to help me to my feet. My limbs were leaden and alien. She wrapped a towel around me, but it was a futile gesture; the cold was coming from inside. Leaning heavily on her, my body convulsing with waves of chills, I stumbled back towards our bungalow, a pathetic, shivering procession across the short stretch of dirt. She helped me onto the bed, piling our thin blankets on top of me, but the Antarctic deep-freeze had taken root in my marrow.
“I’m getting the doctor,” Donna said, her voice tight with alarm.
I could only manage a weak, chattering nod. She left at a run.
At that exact moment, a different drama was reaching its climax in the little hut next door.
Shaman
Papa Foy, the owner of our guesthouse, had been called upon. The family’s own shamans had failed, and in a community this tight-knit, one does not stand by. We had seen his power before in smaller things—blessing a new boat, calming a frightened child. He was a man of few words, with dark, knowing eyes set in a weathered face. Not a shaman by profession, he was a shaman by birthright—a man who understood the subtle languages of the unseen world.
He entered the string-bound hut where Pau lay, a shell of the boy he had been. The air was thick with the smell of herbs and stagnation. Papa Foy knelt. He began to chant, low and guttural, a sound that seemed to vibrate in the very planks of the floor. He believed, as his ancestors did, that the breath is the carrier of life force, the bridge between the human and the spirit. Through focused blowing, a shaman can imprint his will upon the world—to cleanse, to bless, to expel.
He chanted and he blew. He blew over Pau’s heart, his forehead, the soles of his feet. The chant rose in intensity, a commanding, resonant plea to the spirits of the earth, the river, and the ancestors. And then, as if a divine circuit had been completed, Pau’s body went rigid. His back arched violently off the mat, his arms and legs thrust upward in a sudden, spasmodic jerk. From the depths of his being, he drew a great, rasping, life-giving breath, a sound like tearing canvas. His eyes fluttered open. He was back. The phi had been cast out.
Back at the Bungalow
Donna, having left a message with the doctor’s daughter, was hurrying back towards our bungalow, her mind racing with fear. She met Papa Foy, his daughter Lhao, and his daughter-in-law Dam on the path. They were returning from the neighbor’s hut, their faces transformed, lit with a triumphant, weary joy.
“Mai te sai?” Lhao asked. “Where have you been?”
Donna, flustered and worried, replied in her broken Lao, “I went to find the doctor. Papa is very sick. He became suddenly, very cold.”
The looks of triumph on their faces vanished, replaced in an instant with wide-eyed understanding. They didn’t see a separate, coincidental illness. They saw the direct and terrifying consequence of their own success.
“Phi!” Papa Foy said, his voice sharp.
Healing
They didn’t walk; they ran. They stormed up the stairs to our bungalow in a single, determined unit. I was still shivering violently under the pile of blankets, lost in an internal ice age. Papa Foy didn’t hesitate. No questions were asked. He came straight to the bed. His presence filling the small room, he placed a firm, calloused hand on my forehead and another on my chest.
He began to chant, the same low, powerful incantation he had used in the hut. He blew short, sharp puffs of air onto my face, my neck, my chest. His breath was surprisingly warm, carrying the scent of something earthy, like old leaves and incense. It was not a gentle process; it was an act of spiritual scouring. And as he chanted and blew, I felt it—a tangible shift. It was as if a dense, cold fog that had filled my body was being physically pulled out through my skin. The deep, core-chilling cold began to recede, not slowly, but in a rapid, peeling retreat. Within a minute, the violent chattering stopped. Within two, I could feel the ambient heat of the room again. The weight was gone. I took a deep, clear breath, my first in what felt like an eternity.
The Doctor
It was at that moment the doctor arrived, a kind, pragmatic man still in his festival clothes. He looked at me and said, “A sudden fever. The heat can do strange things,” he pronounced. He prepared his standard remedy for unexplained ailments: a shot of vitamin B complex and a dose of anti-malarial.
We thanked him. He meant well. But we knew. Donna and I looked at each other, and then at Papa Foy, who simply nodded, his work complete. There was no need for words.
We don’t have a scientific control to prove what happened that day. We only have the timeline, the testaments, and the visceral memory of a cold that was not of this world. In the rational light of day, it was a sudden, severe fever. But in the thick, spirit-haunted air of Don Det during Phi Mai, the truth felt different. We believe that Papa Foy performed a mighty exorcism, forcing a malevolent phi from Pau’s body. And in its expulsion, disoriented and angry, it sought the nearest available vessel, jumping the sacred white string and finding me, unprotected, in the open shower room.
It was a reminder that in the 4000 Islands, magic isn’t a legend in a book. It’s in the breath of an old man, the string around a hut, and the sudden, shocking cold on a blisteringly hot day. And there are more stories where that came from. Stay tuned.
What a powerful memory!