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Lantern Lanes

✏️ Day 21 – Lantern Lanes
 (Vietnam)

My pencil woke up glowing today.
“Let’s chase the light,” it said.
So I followed—
and found myself in Hanoi.

The page filled with lanterns,
red, gold, and jade,
floating like tiny suns over the street.
The pencil danced between them,
drawing ribbons of laughter and wind.

Then it paused to whisper a secret:
In Hanoi’s Old Quarter,
there’s a train that runs so close to the houses
you could almost reach out and touch it.
I drew that too—
a train brushing past laundry lines,
its whistle blending with dinner smells and chatter.

By the time I signed the page,
the lanterns had spilled off the paper,
glowing softly on my desk.
The pencil just smiled,
as if it had borrowed a bit of Hanoi’s heart.

✨ If your pencil could follow the light, where would it lead you tonight?
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Angkor Echoes

✏️ Day 20 – Angkor Echoes
 (Cambodia)

This morning my pencil stretched into towers,
tall and pointed,
like hands folded in prayer.

It drew the Royal Palace first,
all gold and graceful,
its spires shining even in simple grey lines.
Then the pencil slowed,
etching faces into stone—
gentle, smiling,
as if the ancient temples had never forgotten
how to laugh with the wind.

A secret came:
the Silver Pagoda’s floor
is covered with thousands of silver tiles,
so many that even the ground
glimmers like treasure.
I traced them softly,
feeling as though my pencil
had found coins hidden in the page.

When I signed the corner,
the temple smiles seemed wider,
and the pencil hummed—
as if echoes of Angkor were still alive
in the tip of its lead.

✨ If your pencil found a temple, what blessing would it sketch first?
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Wish You a Happy and Prosperous Life

This greeting, the best wishes I heard from a few friends for the first time, made me wonder. I knew, somehow, what happiness was. But at that age, I didn’t quite understand this word prosperity. That evening, during my Sanskrit class, I asked my teacher, “What is this prosperity, and what is it to be prosperous?”

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