All good
things must come to an end, and so my travels draw to a contented close. Three
months spanned across seven countries, covered over 8800 miles and forty two
various accommodations. I was blessed by a Buddhist long life ceremony,
mastered my very first motorcycle ride, was almost blown up by detonating
kilowatts of fireworks, gave English classes to Tibetan nomads, was
blind-massaged by land mine victims, chatted with monks about their dreams of
moving to L.A. and watched a stripper propel a ping pong from her vagina. I
sneaked (illegally) onto the roofs of majestic temple complexes, bought pizza
for withered women mourning the loss of their king, sat and prayed amongst the
skeletons of genocide victims, and
was attacked by screeching monkeys hurling boulders at my head. I have visited
enough pagodas to last a lifetime, learned that “C’est parti mon kiki!!” is the French phrase de rigeur in Asia and that Obama is the “The Black Superman”; that
Vietnamese boat crews cannot be trusted not to release sewage into the sea
right where you are about to climb back on board, and that overzealous
street-food curiosity leads to unfortunate consequences. Some journeys saw me
cramped fifteen hours on jerking buses launching me to the ceiling with every
tiny bump in the road, requiring a minimum of five layers of clothing due to
inexplicable air conditioning. I craved my yoghurt and muesli breakfasts more
than I ever thought would have been possible, was transformed into a laughing
stock for groups of villagers and was chased out of a Cambodian forest by a crazed demonic ghoul.
We
traveled by every form of transport known to man- aircraft, car, bus,
motorbike, tuk-tuk, bicycle, horse cart, canoe, vans, pickups, ferry, shared
taxi, train, rickshaw, pedalo, sleeper bus, and even a token Maserati thrown in
for good measure (ah Bangkok…). To be frank, the pace and scope of it all was
utterly exhausting; daytimes filled to the brim with discovery and exploration,
and nights often unsleepable or at the least very disturbed.
But I
loved every minute of it. The acquaintances gathered along the way, the radiant
smiles shared with strangers, the seduction of so many novel flavors to the
pallet, the natural wonders seen with the eyes and pungent smells assaulting
the nose, the extraordinary stories heard, the widening of my insight into such
a fascinating and relatively unexploited part of the world... Such moments are
worth those times of hair wrenching frustration, of overwhelming fatigue, of
physical discomfort and grueling lost-in-translation.
There is perhaps one overarching conclusion I would like to
share... The real life and soul of a country cannot be found in guidebooks
alone; visiting a sacred pagoda or an ancient tomb can only grant limited
insight into what really makes a place tick. It is the people who inhabit it,
how they live and think and interact with their environment and with others,
that will make you fall in love. Someone else's mundane tasks of fishing for snails in
delta backwaters, or raking piles of drying long-grain rice onto the highway,
might be their monotonous every day existence but to a traveler’s eyes it
appears so foreign and fascinating, postcard-perfect, an absolute divergence
from that grey cubicle or classroom seminar. Countless times I enjoyed the journey more than the destination. So
sometimes, put away your books, forget the itinerary, open your senses, engage
in random conversations and just wander down that side road.
