We were stopped just fifteen minutes out of town. The highway had been clear on our ride here, but just a week later, we found that the Chinese-funded road was shut down for three hour stretches. It was 9 and the sign indicated we had a two hour wait. I was anxious; this wait would be followed by a five hour bus ride on a bumpy, largely dirt road to Oudomxai today and an equally long but slightly less bumpy ride tomorrow over mountainous roads to get to Luang Prabang in Laos.

We sat around, kicking up dust, initiating idle conversations, staring at the thick, green foliage of the forest below us. We were all surprised to see a Laotian man walk up the hill's crest with a stunned owl, all stripes and swirls and the most beautiful eyes. The man was clean cut, with slacks and a button-up shirt. He could have been on his way to a business meeting in the city. He had just hit the owl with a slingshot.

The Lao men gathered round, slipping a small noose around the bird's leg and then watching it try to take flight, only to be yanked to the ground when it reached the end of the short rope. There were perhaps a dozen of us tourists, most of us recently returned from forest treks where we saw little, if any, wildlife. Plenty had been on display, dead, in the local market, however. We were appalled, mumbling, discussing what, if anything, to do.

The men laughed, poked the bird, spread its wings. It was unclear if they wanted to keep it as a pet, sell it for food, or simply release it when the buses began again to move, entertainment no longer needed. One man looked at us, mimed snapping its neck, wringing his curled fingers in opposite directions.

"Stop that," the Englishwoman yelled. "You're a bad man, a bad Lao."

I cringed, embarrassed for the recipient of her verbal force. Lao people value "cool heart" - an ability to stay calm, not raise voices, and deal with conflict in indirect and face-saving ways.

At the same time, I was ashamed of my paralization. Frozen between mutual desires to help the owl and to respect my role as visitor in a foreign culture, I did nothing except stare at the owl. At one point, it looked at me for a long moment, as if to plead its case.

The woman finally walked over with a pair of scissors, and snipped the rope. Wait, the slingshot owner seemed to indicate, as he held up a finger. He carefully removed the noose from the bird's leg, and held it up to the sunlight, where it took flight.

**

Later, I talked about this with a man from the states on a bus ride from a rural town back to Oudomxai. I asked him what he'd have done in my place. "Nothing," he said. "This place is perfect just the way it is. I hate it when foreigners come over here and try to make this place just like home."

"What if you saw a woman being beaten by her husband?" I asked. "Would you act then?"

"That doesn't happen here."

"Yeah it does. I saw it. In Thailand, not Laos. Still, what then?" I posed the question, honestly curious. I wasn't trying to push his buttons.

He sat quietly, for a moemnt. Then he pulled his shades down over his eyes. "I don't know," he said. "But I'm not here to change anyone into my own ideal." He turned to look out the window, ending the conversation.

I looked out my own window, puzzled. What's an empathetic heart adrift in a foreign culture to do? Do I step forward to challenge what I see as injustice? Or abandon that, recognizing it as the same cleverly-sugared impulse responsible for colonialism and failed development efforts by the western world? Where, exactly, does compassion end and the white savior complex begin?