Source: BBC
About half an hour out of Bangkok, we were soaring at 30,000ft and I looked below: green, tree-covered hills undulated endlessly, impenetrably, to the horizon. After a while the hills gave way to an expanse of watery fields, with here-and-there solitary brown-roofed huts set among the green. Emerald paddies spread like a glistening carpet and larger settlements appeared; a cluster of a dozen homes, then two dozen, with black smoke pluming from a field. Then a thick brown river serpentined through the scene. I looked at the route map and estimated our location: that must be the Mekong!
Soon the landscape changed again, a series of crenellated green mountain ranges with valleys filled with cottony mist. A thin brown trail threaded over these peaks, and I wondered who made that trail, and how long ago and who walks it now.
The mighty Mekong River winds through Southeast Asia (Credit: Yongyuan Dai/iStock)
The mountains ended abruptly and we flew over more green paddies and brown hamlets, then a long thin string of sandy beach appeared, a borderline between land and water. Then we were over the blue-black surface of the East China Sea.
The Earth was unfurling before my eyes.
Time passed and we passed through time zones. The world outside turned dark, and perhaps 30 minutes later, a glitter caught my eye. In the infinite darkness outside there was a constellation of lights. I looked at the in-flight map: Cheju, Korea!
The magic of the moment filled me: the Earth was unfurling before my eyes.
One of my most poignant memories from childhood is my first visit to Disneyland. But what I remember isn’t the Matterhorn rollercoaster or fairytale castle attractions. The experience that remains etched in my brain half a century later is the much simpler Peter Pan’s flight. With my mom, I clambered into a two-seat gondola whose sides were open to the air. We fastened our seatbelts and then the gondola moved from the light of the outside world through thick doors into utter darkness. Suddenly, just as Peter Pan did when he took Wendy and her brothers to Neverland, we rose magically into the sky! And when I looked over the side of the gondola, I could see far, far below a cluster of tiny houses that were lamplit from within. We were flying!
It was one of the most magical experiences of my life.
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