12/31 New Year’s Eve

I’m back in Bangkok. I’ve completed a long 3 month loop of SE Asia. I started here on Oct. 5th, and have gone overland, by bus and by boat, counter-clockwise through southern Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and now back here. It’s a perfect time to be back here, full circle, just as the year ends and a new one begins. So many thoughts and impressions filling my mind. After arriving yesterday and finding a new hotel that was recommended to me by the man with the greatest job in the world (more about him later), I walked down Kho San Road. It was same same as ever, but it was interesting to notice how different my mind was after my 3 months of adventure. When I arrived here from Seattle, I found Kho San Road to be overwhelming in it’s commercialism and tourists. I found myself wanting to buy all kinds of trinkets and clothes and eat the cheap street food and drink beers…and I found it impossible to meet anyone. Everyone seems so young and to be traveling with other young people, and they are all having a great time. Last night, as I walked down the middle of the street, filled with, once again, 20-something scantily-clad western women and hippy/party boys all drinking and buying, buying and drinking, I sensed a definite shift in my mind: It was completely calm. This is still the loneliest place to be when you are traveling alone, but I didn’t feel it nearly so much as I did when I first arrived here. I had no desire to shop or drink beer or eat the cheap Thai food from the countless stalls. I simply wanted to sell back my book, which I had finally finished just before arriving back where I bought it. Anna Karenina is over 800 pages long. An 18th century Russian Classic by Tolstoy. It was strange to be immersed in Russian history and characters while bounding across SE Asia, but that’s what I chose to read when I arrived here. I bought it for ten bucks on Kho San Road, and last night, I sold it back for 2.50, which I used to buy myself dinner.

Kho San Road. It’s horrible and lonely yet so lively and full of beautiful people. It’s not Bangkok, it’s not anywhere. It’s a bubble, a caricature of itself. I felt completely outside of it even as I was in the middle of it. I realized then just what my trip has done to me after 3 months. I am now a calm traveler. I am now “in the groove” as it were. I am centered within myself, no matter what’s going on around me. Being here on new year’s eve is also ironic because this is where I was exactly 3 years ago with Robin, whom I was with for 5 years until last February. We had just come back from the bus trip that everyone talks about: the road from hell from Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) in Cambodia to Bangkok. We were both needing to stay near our guesthouse since we both needed close access to our toilet for reasons I need not explain. Comparing that trip to this one is impossible. This is a long solo wander, while that was a short, tightly-scheduled “couples” trip. Simply being in Bangkok alone already magnifies one’s aloneness, but adding to it the memories of a previous trip with someone you love makes it even more so. Fortunately, I am now much more comfortable with being alone. I’ve been alone a lot during this trip and I think it’s finally feeling ok not only to be alone, which always felt ok to me, but to feel lonely. Feeling lonely feels ok now because I know I won’t be alone for long. There is always someone new and unexpected just around the corner. For example….

Two nights ago, my last night in Laos, I met the man with the greatest job in the world. His name is Michael McGarrigle. He’s from Ireland, in case the name didn’t give that away. A few years back he quit his job as an engineer, sold all he had, and decided to take a 3 year trip around the world. Sounds great, right? Except that when you do that, you come back home with nothing. No savings, no job, no home. Scary. Too scary for me. When I go back home, I will have a little money left (I hope), a home to return to, and since I work for my own business, I will hopefully be able to ask myself for my job back. Michael’s also a musician, and before he left, he was looking for a certain type of travel guitar to take with him on his journey, but he was having a difficult time locating one. So, he managed to get on the local public radio station to talk about his forthcoming trip and ask over the airwaves if anyone had this guitar that he could purchase for his adventure. Well, as luck would have it, some producer from the BBC was listening to his plans and called in to ask him if he would be interested in documenting his trip with a video camera for a BBC series. After meeting with the producers, Michael got a 3 year, all-expenses paid contract with them! This was the first time the BBC has ever given anyone a 3 year contract for any show. He’s got a great little Sony broadcast-quality camera, and some nice microphones. That’s all he really needs. His gear probably weighs less than mine! Not only are all his expenses for the entire trip covered, but he also gets a fairly large salary (40k a year!) on top! In contrast, my travel budget for the entire year is 12,000 dollars. A thousand dollars a month, including flights. Michael is getting paid for traveling around the world and talking about it along the way. The show is called “Around the World in 1,080 Days”. He is the writer, director, camera man and star of the show. He ships the tapes home and the folks back at the BBC edit them into 30 minute shows. What could be better???? I am green with envy. I spent my last morning hanging with him in Vientiane. He asked me to shoot some video of him riding up to the camera on his rented motorbike and talking about arriving in Laos. He had just arrived the day I met him and he only had two weeks there, so he was on a tight schedule there. In return for the “favor” of shooting video for him, he bought me breakfast and I will get a camera credit on the show! Then we went to the holiest of Lao temples on his motorbike and I took photos while he shot video. It was great! He’s a super nice guy and I really enjoyed talking to him and hanging out with him that day. I left that evening on a bus bound for Bangkok. Had my visa not expired that day, I would have happily traveled with him for a while! But we were going opposite directions. This often happens. I meet very cool people but we find that we are going different directions and so we only get to spend a short while together, sometimes only a day, sometimes a few days. If I am lucky I meet some people who are going in my same direction (Nada, Marc, Nicole, Chieko), but more often, they are not (Irene, Paul, Tim, Jeremy, just to name a few).
This is what travel is really about. Yes the temples and the culture and the food and the scenery are all very beautiful and great. But it’s the experiences I have with the people I meet that really leave the strongest impressions on me. OK, I must figure out what I’m going to do here on New Year’s Eve!

Happy New Year to all my friends and family everywhere!

Love,
Greg