Lessons from My Asian Sojourn

We’re seven months into this insane eleven month trip and for all but three weeks we were in Asia, a place I previously had no intention of visiting. Why would I not be interested in visiting the area of the world where most of the people live? Plenty of reasons come to mind, but chiefly I was afraid it would be too different and too difficult. Language barriers wouldn’t be traversable. People would push and shove. Transportation would be impossible due to unreliable schedules and insane driving. I’d get sick. I’d be overwhelmed. I’d be bored. I’d be lonely. I’d be missing home.
It’s easy to worry when you don’t know what you’re up against. But, “worry is the interest paid in advance on a debt you may never owe.” It’s stress for stresses sake. This is not to say I was completely wrong in my worries, but that my worries were in part easily managed in the face of living through them and often totally overblown or entirely misplaced.
A few of the lessons that Asia has taught me is:

• Trains run on time, almost all of the time. Even when we’ve believed we were going to have a flight delayed or a bus would be late it hardly ever happened and never interfered with our schedule. It feels like a myth, or just a sad misfortune, that so many people have had experiences where their mode of transportation was completely late or even non-existent. Most of the time people are on time, at least all throughout Asia.
  
• You can communicate without words. That said, almost everyone has a basic understanding of English that we spoke with, but even for those who knew nothing more than hello there was still common ground to be found and transactions to be made. Smiles are your greatest currency when speaking without words. Kindness can get you so far. I’ve eaten food without being able to speak a word to the food stall owner, just pointing and nodding. I’ve played with kids in the street who chase me with sticks for swords and RWAR at me. I’ve gotten through so much with “Hello” and “Thank you” alone. It’s not perfect, but it’s not as hard as you’d imagine.

  

• Street food isn’t going to kill you, most of the time. While I had a few run-ins with some illness along the way, with one recent notable experience in Bangkok, but I ate almost exclusively street foods for months without major incident. Jason has never had a true case of food poisoning this entire time and despite a little sickness along the way it was worth the tastes and experiences to eat soup on a tiny stool and throw napkins on the ground when you’re done (it’s hard to “litter”, but that’s how it works sometimes! They sweep it up.). Street food showed us what culture is, because people express themselves through their regional ingredients and we are big lovers of that expression.

  

• You’re never far from luxury if you really want it. While not every hotel or guesthouse we stayed in was exceptional, most were above and beyond what I expected when we first planned this venture. Only once did we not have air conditioning and that was my mistake. Beds are harder here (our “mattress” in Mumbai, as I write this, is about two inches thick) and the bathrooms are “wet”, meaning they shower in the same space as the toilet and sink so everything gets wet, but mostly you have the same western standards available that you’d expect anywhere in America. There are Asian “squatty potties” here too, meaning you don’t sit but instead straddle a hole, facing forward, to go to the bathroom and then use a hose, or bidet, as your cleaning practice. It’s something you get used to, but almost always you can find a regular western style toilet too. Even if there are things that aren’t as comfortable as home, almost everything is still fine after some adjusting.

  

  Food wise, if I ever wanted pizza or eggs and toast I could find it no problem. We in fact ate pizza at least half a dozen times. Mexican food doesn’t translate well outside of the US or Mexico, but we even had that a few times to get a different taste than rice or noodles day in and day out. If you want to eat something, most often you can find a place that will serve you at least an approximation of that dish.

  

• Road rules are mere suggestions, most of the time. In Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore there is considerably more order while driving, but in almost every other place we went the amount of people who took road signs and signals as suggestions far outnumbers those that followed them, leading to overall “chaos” most of the time. You can adapt to chaos though. Traffic here is a flow, and as my friend Jon Dallas said about Vietnamese traffic, “There’s always room for you”. Horns indicate you’re there, you’re turning, you’re in someone’s blind spot, or less frequently that you’re pissing someone off. While Malaysia and Cambodia had considerably less horns blowing even these places are uproarious compared to the way we use horns in the states.

  

  Walking across the street was a challenge that started in our first country, Korea. You just learn that you move with the flow of traffic and no one wants to hit you, just don’t stutter. Jason would get very frustrated with me if I started panicking in the middle of the road, because it’s more dangerous to slow down or stop completely while crossing than move at a steady pace. Be predictable and you won’t get hurt.

  

• It’s OK to be bored, lonely, and unsure, some of the time. My fears about how I’d feel were in some ways spot on and in other ways self induced. I have had moments of deep and utter boredom. “How?!” I hear you asking. Because, we have had so much downtime that we’ve spent days just sitting in hotel rooms, only leaving once per day to eat or get supplies. Not having a job adds immensely to your “time”. Having no hobby increases this into new dimensions of ennui. Of course we saw amazing sites and had many days of what seemed like endless travel and adventure, but between those we waited. We waited in airports for hours on end because we’re always early to flights. We sat and stared at the walls (read: internet) because we decided there was a greater need to save money than going out and doing one more expensive excursion. We did miss going seeing things I’d have loved to see, like the country of Myanmar or other parts of Indonesia, and there were a few temples, waterfalls, and caves that would have put a little more magic into the trip, but we still found plenty to keep occupied with along the way.  I wish I could say I found a better way to occupy my restless mind, but I haven’t, and it’s a struggle I hope is soon alleviated with the faster pace that Europe is going to provide.

  

• You’re never going to get it “right”. I’ve been craving bigger travel challenges lately. I have a friend who’s hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and I’m madly jealous. She’s going to sleep under the stars, play in the woods, survive on her own will and trail magic. How cool! If I keep up at this logic I’ll never be “happy” with our trip. If I want deeper challenges, now that our trip has become easier due to greater experience, than I need to build that in. Every trip could have been better, had more fun, more relaxation or excitement or adventure, but if you don’t accept that it’s going just fine the way it is you’ll never be happy. Be happy where you are or what’s the point of going anywhere or seeing anything new if it’s never enough?
  
• It’s worth it. So many people tell me “I wish I could travel” and, while finances can absolutely hold you back, it’s really an inability to plan or a lack of motivation that keeps them stuck. I met a 78 year old man traveling solo in Malaysia. I met an Egyptian Muslim women traveling for four months in India by herself. I’ve seen a couple who were both in wheelchairs on the beach of Malaysia, drinking cocktails and talking to locals. If you want to go to Southeast Asia it’s not a matter of money, once you buy your flight over, but more so a matter of how far you’re willing to leave your cushy comfort zone. Believe me, I didn’t want to go! I understand the draws of comfort and stability. But, I’m glad I did and I know people who tell me they “can’t” most likely could and just aren’t finding the motivation to push through and make it happen. If you want to go, you should commit to it. If you don’t really want to go, that’s OK too, but don’t let yourself hold you back if it’s what you truly desire.
  

I could tell you more lessons that I’ve learned about myself and my travels. I could celebrate or complain. But, I’ll leave it here for now, because I need to leave at midnight to catch this flight to Greece at 6:20 a.m. tomorrow morning. See you in the EU!

Coconut trees standing tall, bearing their heavy fruits
Banana bunches reaching desperately for the ground
Buzzing mosquitos, barking dogs, beeping cars
Bitter melon and sour soups
The inescapable heat that leads to endless summer blossoms
Water in, sweat it out
Drink it in again
With urgency now, to quench your thirst
Drink it in one last time
Realizing not the depths you’ve dove
Or how much you may miss this moment
Years from now
As the details turn to dust
All you have is that feeling in your chest
About how it once was
About how good it felt to be