Back to the Future
I’m jumping forward to the future again to let you in on some big news on the travel front. Before we headed off to adventures in Southern Laos without internet, we bought our return ticket home.
Because I’m all about sharing the reality of travel – the good and the bad – let me explain how that came to be. It took us a while to admit it, but somewhere in the last few months of endless buses, boats, lukewarm showers, hard beds, temples and cafes, we both started feeling a little burnt out and bored. I know it is a hard thing to imagine – how could someone feel anything but ecstatic on a “trip of a lifetime” – but it is true. And it happens to the best of them.
I can think of many possible explanations. Maybe it was because we got waylaid involuntarily in several towns in a row. It is one thing to decide to stay put and relax; it is another to be ready to move on but being stymied for one reason or another.
Maybe it was because one or the other of us was sick off and on for weeks.
Maybe it was post-India let down. India was invigorating precisely because it was challenging. Anything Southeast Asia could throw at us paled in comparison and seemed like a nagging bother instead of a cultural challenge.
Maybe it was because until recently, we’ve been mostly moving along Southeast Asia’s tourist trail. It is all too easy to go through the motions of travel and end up in the same places, surrounded by other Westerners doing the same things and eating the same comfort foods.
Maybe it is because getting off the tourist trail seemed like more work than we felt like exerting by this point in the trip.
Maybe it was because on some level, we are homesick and some part of us wants to be eating the comfort foods instead of more noodles and rice.
Maybe it was because the trip was rapidly winding down, and neither of us is any closer to figuring out what we want to do with the rest of our lives.
Maybe it was because we let the extraordinary become ordinary.
Maybe it was just because we’d been away from home for nine whole months.
In reality, I suspect that it was some combination of all of these things.
So, naturally, we did what any burnt-out traveler would do…we decided to extend the trip. Makes perfect sense, right?
As we waited for me to recover from a stomach ailment in Vientiane, we found ourselves scheming. One great part about Laos was traveling for a bit with our new German friends. Hearing about their upcoming plans to head to New Zealand, we found ourselves searching for flights and researching costs of campervans. We realized part of the reason we were feeling a little blah was the thought that Southeast Asia could be it for our trip. Our dwindling funds and time meant that we easily could finish out our time in Southeast Asia, in countries that may be unique but that are more alike than they are different.
So, one day – kinda like how this whole trip started in the first place – we just did it. We bought a ticket from Malaysia to New Zealand. Sure, there was much deliberation first. Sure, we probably are just procrastinating returning to the real world. Sure, we’re going to dip into our savings to finance the extension. But, you know what? Suddenly, we’re excited again. About everything. About spending more time in Southeast Asia to see most of what we want to see at a slow pace. About going to New Zealand. About getting our own wheels again. About having a firm return date home.
The truth is, I think the open-endedness of the end of the trip was making us flail around a bit. There are tons of lifestyle redesign proponents out there advocating traveling without time restraints or plans. I’m continually fascinated by the growing chorus of interesting people designing ways to travel indefinitely and encouraging others to do so. I think that’s great, and if there is one thing I learned from our travels is that I need to create the lifestyle I want rather than just do what I’m supposed to do. But the thing is, creating the lifestyle I want involves going home. We’re both too big of homebodies to travel forever. I like Pittsburgh. I like having a home. I know that I want travel to be part of my life, but I don’t want travel to be my life.
So while I haven’t had any grand epiphanies about what I want to do with my life – just small revelations that I haven’t quite worked into a coherent whole – as of May 13, 2011, 408 days after leaving Pittsburgh, I’ll have to work on creating the life I want at home. And I’m okay with that. Especially since between now and then, I have a lot to look forward to. Instead of only spending a week or so in Laos as we originally planned, we only had days to go on our 30 day visa when we crossed the border to Cambodia yesterday. We’ll spend a couple of weeks in Cambodia (famous last words!), including watching the Steelers play in the AFC championship game at the crack of dawn on Monday, then cross over into Vietnam to be in Saigon in time for the Steelers to win their seventh Super Bowl. : ) We plan to be in Vietnam for three to four weeks in total, and we’ll fly from Hanoi back to Bangkok in late February/very early March. We hopefully will be meeting up for a little bit with a friend of mine from high school who has been working on her own travel plans. We’ll head south through the Thai islands, and do a quick jaunt in Malaysia as we make our way to Kuala Lumpur for our April 3 flight to Christchurch. We’ll tour New Zealand by campervan for a month in April (when the flights and campervans are cheaper as it turns to the shoulder season), and then head home – but not before making a week-long stop in Hawaii first. As it turns out, flying from Auckland to Honolulu and from Kauai to Pittsburgh was slightly cheaper than just flying straight home from New Zealand. Which is awesome, especially since we missed Kauai on our honeymoon. As opposed to our big pimping honeymoon splurges, we’ll attempt frugality in Hawaii this time (unless the Hotel Hana-Maui wants to put us up for free, of course. Love that place). As far as re-entries to the United States go, I can’t think of a better way than to visit state number 50. I can taste the pineapple already.
So that’s our plans in a nutshell. Hope you’ll join us for the rest of the ride, as well the rest of the highlights and lowlights from our travels in Thailand, round one, and Laos. Teasers of what’s to come: elephants, elephants and more elephants; the slooooooooow boat to Laos; why foreign massages aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be; and Sean and Amy do Laos on two wheels. Thanks for reading along!
Howdy.
Just a quick note to let you know that you may not be seeing too much activity around here for the next week. We’re headed to Southern Laos. I hear the internet is spotty at best and nonexistent at worst, and some places only have electricity for several hours a day. (The biggest problem with this, of course, is that we probably will have absolutely no way to watch the Steelers whip the Dirty Birds this weekend. Ack!) But rest assured we’ll be back posting when we can.
Memo to Perverts Re: Your Weird Google Searches
To Whom It May Concern:
I’m sorry to disappoint the person who came to this blog after searching for “naked Japanese women in a hot spring,” or more disturbingly, “naked students onsen,” but as you’ve probably figured out by now, Google is not yet quite as fine tuned as you and it someday hope it might be. Take it from the many disappointed people who have come to Surrounded by the Sound after searching for some variation of a European country + “nude beach.” And to the person who day after day keeps searching for “Tom and Jerry porn” – ew, just ew.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Amy
Happy New Year! (and 9-month update)
Interrupting your regularly scheduled India posts to wish everyone Happy New Year from Laos. We rang in the new year with new friends from Germany and some Beer Lao, which we can confirm is Asia’s tastiest and cheapest brew.
The new year also marks 9 months on the road for us. All of a sudden, we feel like our trip is coming to an end. Our plan is to return home around April, 12 months after we left, but we just can’t bear buying a return ticket home yet. 3 months sounds so much shorter than 4 months, and more likely than not we will be spending the bulk of that time in Southeast Asia. Our original plan was to be here for 11 weeks. We’ve already been here for 5 weeks, and still have lots to see. At this point in our trip, we lack the motivation to move around a ton (especially because moving around in SE Asia often requires long windy bus rides or slow boats down the river). We’re currently in Luang Prabang, Laos. We plan to head south into southern Laos and Cambodia, then make our way north through Vietnam. We’ll fly from Hanoi back to Bangkok, and then will head south, stat, to the Thai beaches. From there, we’ll just have to see how much time and money we have left. Because we are over budget due to spending an extra month in Europe and the expensiveness of Japan, we realized a while back that Australia is just not in the cards for us on this trip. I’m not ready to admit that we probably will be cutting New Zealand too. I’m still holding out hope that money will drop down from the sky.
At this point in our trip, we used to the constant packing and repacking, wearing the same clothes OVER and OVER again, and the perpetual motion. We’re still enjoying ourselves, but I must admit we were checking Craiglist for apartments the other day. It is strange – I am so ready to come home in some ways, but there is still so much more to see…plus there’s that whole pesky working thing that we’ll be needing to do at some point. I’m very grateful we had the opportunity to travel for a year straight, but I’ve decided that it is not my preferred way to travel. I think the ideal travel situation would be a couple of months at home, a couple of months on the road. If only someone would pay me to do this…any takers?
Hope you are enjoying your first day of the year. We’re off to see what I hear is a gorgeous waterfall, so I think it is going to be a good day. And also, hopefully, a good year. I’m not making any resolutions other than to enjoy and appreciate the rest of our trip, and to find a job I don’t hate this year. What are your resolutions? If you’ve been wanting to travel, make it happen in some way, shape or form this year.
And with that, wishing you…
Merry Christmas, Thai style!
This is the first Christmas we’ve been away from home, which means it is also the first Christmas we’ve spent in a warm place. Forecast for Chiang Mai for Christmas Day: 86 and sunny. Forecast for Pittsburgh: 29 and snow showers.
Christmas is the one day where we’d rather be in the cold. This year, there’s no Christmas cookies; no decorating the tree; no family get-togethers; no 24 hours of The Christmas Story; and no presents for Fabulous on Christmas morning. Every year, I start the holiday season off by playing my favorite Christmas album, A Very Special Christmas. It is missing from our ITunes collection and I can’t find it on the internet. It’s just not the holidays without the Pointer Sisters pointing out, Whoa! Here we go! Another year gone by!
Yet, this holiday season has not been as different as we would have guessed. We saw Christmas decorations before Halloween. We went Christmas shopping and heard the same Christmas tunes, over and over. We saw lots of twinkling lights and there’s been Christmas trees in the lobbies of most of the places we’ve stayed in December. Santa even knew where to find us, even though we don’t have a chimney and didn’t put cookies and milk out for him and carrots out for Rudolph. Courtesy of Santa, we’re staying in some fancier digs tonight and tomorrow and may even treat ourselves to dinner at a real restaurant that isn’t on the side of the road. We plan to finally watch Bad Santa while lounging on our giant bed with multiple pillows (what luxury!) We even got to watch our first Steelers game of the season today – for the win, nonetheless. Thanks, Santa!
Santa climbing up MBK Center in Bangkok
Santa the Roaming Gnome roaming through the streets of Chiang Mai
New fancy digs...
...which we better not get used to because after we leave, we'll be spending 2 days crossing into Laos by boat. I hear it is BYOC (bring your own cushion).
Turns out that even though Thailand is 95% Buddhist, there are signs of Christmas everywhere. Even more so than the occasional Christians or the abundance of ex-pats, I’m guessing that Christmas is popular here because Thais love any type of celebration. Yep, Christmas in Thailand isn’t half bad, even though our thoughts will be in Pittsburgh. We wish everyone, wherever you are in the world, a very Merry Christmas. FedEx has your presents, so you’ll have to just enjoy scenes from the holidays in Thailand instead:
Thais posing in the middle of a giant snow globe in Bangkok; why, I don't know. I don't ask. I just capture.
Christmas tree in a Bangkok mall
Chatuchak Weekend Market, Bangkok, where you could get a neon sign wishing folks Merry Christmas or with a man peeing. Your pick.
Chiang Mai ladies wish you a Merry Christmas.
Homemade ornaments at the Sunday Market in Chiang Mai
Presents. More specifically, presents, on a barge, on oil drums, randomly in the middle of the canal in Chiang Mai. Only in Southeast Asia.
Couldn't do the annual Christmas Eve photo in front of Sean's parents' tree, so one taken in the mirror of the lobby of where we stayed for the past three nights on the way out the door will have to do.