Four Months On The Road, Still Learning

Sitting in the crummy departures lounge at Kathmandu airport’s international terminal, I felt genuinely sad to be leaving. My sister points out this is a good thing; wanting to stay or return is generally better than fleeing and not looking back.

Four months a few days ago I left Vermont, and two months in Nepal was long enough that I’m having culture shock here in Vietnam. Credit cards? Nice cars on fast roads? Skyscrapers and swimming pools? Christmas music playing in every store? What the hell kind of country is this?!​

​Vietnam has always been my planned final stop for this travel stint, owing to the fact that one of my oldest friends lives here now - and how could I come all the way across Asia without stopping here to see Katy? 

So that’s one thing I learned the hard way: there’s no easy way to get from Kathmandu to Ho Chi Minh City. 

But the effort was worth it! Katy has been in HCMC since March, teaching English and learning the ropes of expat life in Vietnam. She exemplifies the spirit of deciding to try something unusual and just diving in and sorting out the details as you go. I love and respect this deeply. And I remain in awe of the long days she spends commuting among a half-dozen teaching jobs while also studying for her license. I bow down!

Thanks to Katy, I also learned how to hail a motorbike taxi (super awesome app for that), and thanks to Kathmandu I learned to walk directly across the street while threading through a fleet of said motorbikes. 

I learned in HCMC that acupuncture feels really weird. I’m glad I tried it, but my skepticism remains intact.

I learned from painful photography in the War Remnants Museum how devastating the “American War” was in Vietnam, and continues to be due to the lasting damage of chemical weapons and landmines. My loose conception of the Vietnam War being a series of terrible decisions that ground up unwilling soldiers is now shifted dramatically to include the surreal and terrifying civilian ​experience here.

In the coastal town of Hoi An, I learned that sometimes it’s pretty great to give in to the lure of a tourist town. Lanterns! Waterfront restaurants! Historic tours that end in souvenir shops!  it was extremely charming, all of it.

And lastly, in Vietnam I have relearned the wisdom of John Steinbeck’s observation that a trip has a life of its own. A trip starts well before you depart, and sometimes it’s over before you get home. Christmas music is indeed everywhere here (this still surprises me!) and I’m counting down the days and hours till I fly home to San Diego, with gratitude for the time I’ve had abroad — and already with ideas of where to go next.

What have we learned, now?

Seriously, look at these guys work. A hundred feet of air between the bridge deck and the water, and they're basically playing hokey-pokey while carrying untold weight.

Three months into my semi-permanent vacation, I’m making this monthly check-in a variation on the theme: these are things I knew already, but in the last month I’ve noticed them more sharply than before.

• My strengths:  tenacity, endurance.
• My weaknesses:  staying on the correct trail, wayfinding generally.
• I love, love, love my family and friends and their easy, generous, spirited enthusiasm for my oddball, unusual goals. Life is less lonely when you’ve got a tribe cheering you on, and I’ve had that and more throughout this trip. Thank you for the steady stream of encouragement from home, it’s been invaluable.
• Porters  are badasses.  Seriously, these guys are so strong. They carry unimaginably heavy loads over difficult trails and across narrow bridges, uncomplaining and often smiling. I’m amazed every time they make the effort to unleash a joyful, “Namaste!” Were I they, my utterance would be closer to, “Get the hell out of my way….”
• Dal bhat is the best! Rice, curried vegetables and lentil soup, served on a tray with a crispy bit of papadam, this is the ideal nutrition for long days of hiking, and generous seconds make it the best deal on the guesthouse menu. 24-hour dal bhat power.
• Everywhere in Nepal I’ve observed the easy kindness of strangers, and it makes smile and feel glad to be alive in the world. Sharing water with thirsty people on the trail, congratulating people on reaching the top of a climb, making space for everyone around the fire. There is an interest in communal well-being and kindness that softens the severe environment we’re trekking through.

What Have We Learned So Far?

Two months ago today, I got in my tiny car just after the sun rose over the Winooski River and left Vermont for a long break. In the intervening weeks, I have traveled across the country and halfway around the world. Here's a scattershot of thoughts I keep returning to:

1. There is real pleasure in learning, and this is heightened when language barriers and lack of internet access curtail the amount and quality of information available to you.

2. Unfamiliar places are fantastically fertile ground for imagination. There is sensory enjoyment in wandering, looking up, soaking in smells and sounds and fantasizing about the millions of people over thousands of years who've walked through the places you're lingering in.

3. Travel is also an exercise in emotional intelligence. Irritations and low moments call on you to manage your reactions and expectations. The photo up top captured a moment of pure, unvarnished joy. That baby goat was so soft, so sweet tempered; the sky was intensely blue and sunny, the view down the valley astonishing. This is what travel adventures look like online: curated, cultivated happiness. The reality is, there are frustrations, extrinsic and self-imposed. There are days that don't go so well, and moments when irritations can escalate more quickly than they ought to. Learning to manage this is also part of travel - finding the most harmonious line between patience and action, between flexibility and decisiveness.

4. The phrase "visually stunning" has felt literal at moments. There are landscapes in China and Tibet that overwhelmed me in ways that there wasn't space in my brain to do anything but stare and try to memorize what I was seeing.

Lake Yamdok, Tibet

6. Normalcy is a shape-shifter and you can pretty much get used to anything.

7. Planning and thoughts of "what happens next?" are inescapable. Micro-term, near-term, long-term - you make the best decisions you can about where to go, how to get there, where to stay, what to eat and what to do based on the information you have available (and then laugh later when you realize how naive/prescient/lucky you might have been).