Best mocktail of my life. Tan and homesick. In love with a book, again.
Today I met a man who is traveling with his best friend and their wives. He was here 45 years ago, a Vietnam veteran, and returned to redefine what this place means to him. Maybe it wasn’t all for nothing then, he said to me. It brought tears to my eyes.
Bowling Alley Revelations
Last night, I fell in love with someone’s story. A boy name Andy from England, he is my age. Immediately after graduating, he moved to South Africa for 8 months to live and work, propelled by nothing else but a lifelong fascination. Afterwards he spent another 3 months in Kenya and Tanzania, distributing food packages through a church organization. I wanted to help people, is what he says.
These are the kind of people you will meet at a Lao bowling alley circa 1am.
And now he is here, in the latter half of a six month trip. New Zealand to Fiji to Australia to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia. He goes home and works only to make enough money to travel again. The truest part of me knows he’s got it right. That the problem with American social norms is that there is too much to do and too little to live for.
I think about the fear I felt surrounding this trip. To leave the people I love, to go to a place I couldn’t before locate on a map let alone conceptualize, and make home in that space. To leave when the proper next step is to begin the frantic job search, to rush into the abyss.
This trip has made me hungry. I know there is no such thing as a geographical cure, nor am I looking for one. I have gone through the painful, humbling process humans must experience to be able to live comfortably in their own skin. This trip has made the world a delicious mystery. It has made me hungry.
None of this is to say I am not excited to go home. I count down the days. There are people I miss so much they have left an untreatable ache in their absence. But I made a promise to myself in a badly lit bowling alley too late last night that it’s not over. That when I go home I will loosen the chains around my ankles that I myself put there. That I will strive to always seek freedom over security.
Blah. Laying at the pool all day today.
Sabaidee
Today, Casey and Madison went kayaking with the boys we met and I hung back in favor of exploring the city a bit more. Let’s be honest, these arms are not made for paddling. I left our hostel this morning with no aim and no goal, and it turned out to be one of the most wonderful days. The weather is hot but not overbearing, and by the river it is perfect, the kind of warm I daydream about when I’m bundled in sweaters and blankets in Boston.
Luang Prabang, like Pai, is an easy place to fall in love with. Small enough to understand and make your own, lovely local people positively glowing with the sun stored in their skin. Very unlike Pai, you are able to feel its history. An interesting mix of crisp, French Colonial architecture and intricate, brightly colored Buddhist temples, it feels foreign and familiar all at once. I walked around for five hours and I know there is so much more to see. This place, it reminds me of falling in love, elegant in its simplicity.
I went down the main road to the end of town, crossed a bridge into a smaller village, and then back along the river. I returned to the lookout we went to yesterday, visited the Luang Prabang Museum, walked around a couple temple complexes and met some very friendly monks, a two kittens and a puppy. I also got a chance to talk to some of the locals and learn about the surrounding villages where they are from.
There is something so different about experiencing beauty by yourself. With no one to make the mundane observation to: “wow, this is really beautiful,” you have to internalize it, like a kept secret, it is so much stronger when you have to hold it all inside of yourself. Your response to it just culminates in your fingertips, or pours out of your eyes.
