I’m a dreamer. For as long as I can remember, getting lost in fantasies about life, imagined adventures and conversations have helped me through the dull moments. The more advanced my mobile phone has become though, the less time there has been for idle dreaming and the more time I’ve spent actually researching, planning, and getting lost in the depths of the internet rather than my own brain.
It’s hard not to feel blissful and filled with inner peace and wisdom when sitting by this gorgeous beach, enjoying a shaded breeze, listening to the sounds of water lapping the sand and music on the restaurant radio, dragon fruit smoothie in hand.
I’ve learned a few things on this trip, and specifically in the past few days, that I hope I can carry with me back to New York in 10 days.
1. If you don’t like something, change it.
I was unhappy at my job and in my stagnant New York life, so I hopped on a plane and have experienced the most happiness, peace, and even joy in the last three months that I have felt in a long time. More concretely, last night I stayed at the Big Easy hostel in Sihanoukville. I loved the friendly owner, liked the big bar out front with its awesome tunes and affordable, tasty, bbq pulled pork, and I appreciated the clean, air conditioned dorm. However, rooming with 16 people in a party beach town leads to drunk dudes puking all night and trying to sleep in the wrong beds. Even without that, the beach scene near the hostel was not my vibe. Being easy going, I could have stuck it out, it wasn’t THAT bad. But instead, I packed my too-many bags and got in a Tuk Tuk to the much nicer Otres beach and booked myself a private room at a social hostel also with a bar/restaurant. While waiting for check in, I indulged in an amazing seafood brunch at Moorea and got the chance to mellow out. After finally seeing my $12 room at Wish You Were Here though, I immediately knew it was way too basic for me, and after my Gecko nemesis fiasco at Hariharalaya I decided that even though the heart and soul of the place was amazing, I had to go. I moved next door to a soulless but slightly more civilized room with private bathroom for $15. I made a great decision. Rather than complaining about something, find a solution, and follow through as soon as possible. Be decicive, and don’t be afraid to change a decision if it’s not working out for you.
2. Age ain’t nothin’ but a number.
I’ve met so many people on this trip and have rarely if ever been able to accurately surmise their ages. I’ve met so many 30 year olds that my perception of what 30 is no longer exists. I’ve met incredibly mature and wise 18 year olds and I’ve met 40-somethings who get wasted every night and act like obnoxious idiots and I’ve met 70-somethings who are loving every minute of their exotic adventure and whose stamina put me to shame. People pass through phases and circumstances and relationships in remarkably unique ways, and there is no point in worrying about what life at a certain age should look like. Sometimes I think we’d be happier if we didn’t track our ages at all. Life should be about experiencing each day fully and enjoying the unexpected twists and turns and decisions we make along the way, not about fulfilling certain societal standards at certain benchmarks.
3. Nothing ever happens when you stay in bed.
4. We’re only human, let it go.
At the yoga retreat I did near Siem Reap, Cambodia, I was expecting to feel the same enlightenment and physical and mental release that I usually feel from doing yoga in New York City. While I enjoyed the retreat immensely, pushed my boundaries, felt surrounded by a wonderful community of kind and fascinating people, and generally had a very positive experience, I didn’t really find the “enlightenment” I was looking for. In fact, I was reminded of how very human I am in my abhorrence for one person who just got under my skin, and general emotions that pop up in an intense community – jealousy, shyness, vanity, bitterness, frustration, and insecurity, that I forgot I was still capable of having. In the end, I think it was a good thing for me to experience all of these emotions and realize that I am not yet as “evolved” as I would like to be. I know that the only person who can make you feel a certain way is yourself, and yet my self control and ability to let emotions and negative thought patterns go is a muscle that, as with all people, needs training. It wasn’t that my negative thoughts and emotions were so strong as to severely impact my experience at the retreat, but it was a good look in the mirror to learn these things about myself in the one place on the trip where I least expected to have those feelings. My awareness of the wall I was putting up, which thus far on the trip I had been so proud about not building, made it so much easier to dissolve. When I reminded myself that the other people on the retreat are also just complex, messy, evolving humans as well, I felt so much better and was able to let go of some of the feelings I was holding and open myself up more to them and social experiences at and after the retreat.
I also had a lot of anxiety at the waterfall in Luang Prabang. As everyone from my hostel tour group dashed up the steep winding path to the top of the falls, I knew that I couldn’t and didn’t want to follow, and got extremely frustrated with myself alone and parched in the heat and unable to find the swimming area of the falls, so I left in tears and took a separate tuk tuk back to town, where I broke down in an unknown buddhist temple, feeling lost yet totally aware of the poetry, before finding my hostel just across the street. It wound up perfectly fine, and I realized that it’s ok to not enjoy certain things and all the excuses I was drafting in my head to tell people were unneccesary. I’m my own person and I love who I am, and that person just does not love hiking. Furthermore, as learned in yoga, some days you can push your limits further than others, and that day was not the day, and that’s perfectly ok.
I’m sure I will learn these lessons over and over on this trip, before they fully sink in, but in my brief 2.5 days in Pai so far, I think I’ve learned some things about myself and how I want to live my life.
1. I love being alone.
2. I love talking to and being around new people.
3. All you have to do is leave your room and things will probably happen.
4. I love when a day is so packed that it feels like 10 days.
When I was working at my last job, days blended so that June became January in both a flash and an eternity. I have more memories in the last two days in Pai than I have in the average month of working and living back home. I want a job where I can chart a fresh itinerary of challenges every day and can treat every day as part of the adventure and journey that is my life.
5. Just chilling, staying in once place, or going to the same place is totally OK.
If there is some place that you love, then going back again is part of living life on your terms. It’s great to challenge yourself and I love new things, but there is no guilt in going back to the same place if you really love it, especially if you’ll be creating new experiences and memories there. I hate routine when it is by default, but when it’s a choice unimpacted by fear of change, I think it’s totally OK, and I’m going to try to remind myself of that rather than forcing myself to do something different every moment.
6. Don’t be ruled by FOMO.
The girls I volunteered with are going to a festival in Chiang Dao from February 14th to 15th. I was plannng to be in Laos at that time. However, part of me is tempted to stay in Chiang Mai an extra week so I can go to the festival with them, and I can spend it getting to know Chiang Mai even better and spending my days taking art classes. If I stay, I will have fear of missing out on Laos, which I am also afraid I might not like. If I go to Laos, I have fear of missing out on this fun event that my friends are going to. I’m having a hard time deciding, but right now it’s looking like Laos will win.
Pai is small town nestled in the mountains, a winding threeish hour drive up from Chiang Mai. My impression from hearsay and the internet was that Pai is notorious for being a hippie paradise filled with natural healing, drugs, and rasta bars alongside the natural beauty of waterfalls, the Pai Canyon, and other sites only accessible by motorbike. In the end, I got sucked into Pai’s charms and wish I could’ve stayed just one day more – but I do think Pai fell a bit short of expectations.
Truth is, I was really disappointed in Pai when I first hopped off my mini bus. I spent the nauseating (but not nearly so bad as the “I Survived 267 Curves to Pai” t-shirts insinuate) ride chatting with an American expat who knows Pai very well, and two girls who met while volunteering at an Elephant Camp. He gave us heaps of things to do and see in Pai and I was excited to start exploring this magical place. When I started walking around Pai that first day though, it was pretty dead. Sure it was a Tuesday, but it’s high season many guest houses were at capacity. I found some lovely cafes and restaurants but they were mostly empty. My first stop was a gigantic cafe covered in flowers and serving the most amazng array of cheesecake and other desserts. I sat for a blissful few minutes with a Bananoffee Pie and relaxed.
Next I shopped around the tourist shops and tried to get a feel for Pai, but it was pretty much a dusty ghost town compared with Chiang Mai and weaving on foot around motorbikes was (and is!) extra annoying in Pai. The people at my guest house were friendly, but after the bus ride and filled with exhaustion, they all seemed more worldly than me and like a family that I wasn’t ready to break into yet. My guesthouse, Common Grounds, has beautiful new dorms and rooms amidst trees and hammocks with a big outdoor lounge area where guests lay around all day and night, chatting, playing games, napping, drinking, you name it. It’s a great place for an extended stay if you’re looking to be adopted by a great group of people who can really introduce you to Pai – or if you just want to sleep snuggled under a comforter that feels like a cloud from heaven and have YOUR OWN outlet right next to your bed. On that first afternoon though, I was too desperate for a shower and a good, proper meal to sit and socialize for long with a huge group of people. I felt a little bit homesick. As the day got later though, the market stalls started popping up on walking street and Pai started to come to life. I did peruse the street food stalls for a bit with a french girl from the guest house but parted ways as I sought out the PERFECT restaurant to unwind, eat and people watch. I finally found Pai Siam, a bright cafe adorned with colorful handmade lampshades.
I overheard that the pasta was incredible there, so I ordered one of my only Western meals since I’ve been in Thailand – fettucine with mushrooms in cream sauce. It came with orgasmic garlic bread and the whole meal was spectacular, at least as far as Italian food in Thailand goes. I also had a glass of wine, which has been very hard to find at a reasonable price in Chiang Mai. The ambiance was spot on and I had a wonderful view of the people passing by as my warm fuzzies for Pai started to appear. After dinner, I booked a van tour for the next morning, shopped around a bit more, and then stumbled on a beautiful bar with a live acoustic musician crooning Blackbird by The Beatles. Obviously I went in, seeing as I am like a moth to flame when it comes to live guitar. I sat on a cushion on a raised platform and sipped my Mai Tai. I can’t express how much I loved this bar at that moment, it was perfection. Eventually a woman from Portland who’s friend left the bar early came over to talk to me, thinking I looked familiar. It turns out that we had eaten dinner at the same restaurant earlier and had remembered eachother. This is when I started to realize how small and homey Pai could feel. You really do keep seeing the same people and striking up brief friendships isn’t hard. The woman and I talked for awhile and walked around after the live music stopped. She pointed out some good bars to me and I went home feeling that Pai wasn’t so bad afterall, tucked in by 11.
The most talked about attraction in LP is the waterfall. As much as I tend to be “nature, shmature,” I was excited to see the falls and swim in the glistening pools, a refreshing respite from midday heat.
Along with my roommates and some other hostel mates, we headed on a 45 minute van ride to the falls. When we arrived, the clear thing to do was to run onto the bridge and snap photos of the glorious blue water. It really was a gorgeous waterfall. Very quickly, most of our crew bounded across the bridge and up a steep set of stairs leading into the mountain to climb to the top of the falls. I started up after them but quickly realized, I fucking hate hiking. I had already heard that this hike was more than 45 minutes long and treacherous. It wasn’t going to happen. At the base of the falls back by the bridge, there was a no swimming area. I saw a couple in their 60s climbing down another path and asked how it was. Quite steep. I was so agitated and upset that I had come here for nothing. I peed in the men’s squat toilet. Looked around a bit. Shed a couple frustrated tears. Chased our van driver and van back down the path to the falls to no avail. Considered getting a bite to eat and waiting for the others, but then I saw some girls in a Tuk Tuk heading back and hopped in with them.
The girls were french and super friendly and approachable looking. They told me about how great their morning at the falls had been while droplets from their waterfall sodden hair sprayed me as the Tuk Tuk sped off and I wiped a stray angsty tear away. The rest of the 45 minute ride I crafted my beautiful excuses in my head: visions of falling off a cliff with nobody to hear me scream, blood streaming from my cracked skull into the mekong. At the end of the day though, I was just tired, thirsty with no water, and alone – none of which combine well with my existing hatred of climbing up and down lumpy masses of bug filled and twig pricking dirt. By leaving the falls early, at least I had SEEN them, and would get to go to the ethnic museum.
When the Tuk Tuk driver delivered us to Luang Prabang, he pointed me to my hostel via a temple I had never seen before. As I climbed the temple steps I started sobbing with no idea where I was and just out of exhaustion. I also was bemused at the image of me crying in a completely empty and isolated Buddhist temple. This was the first time I’d really cried on this trip and I think the “out of my element” feeling was striking me really hard. The hostel was literally right on the other side of the temple and I calmed down, wallowed in some WI fi, and grabbed a crepe where I ran into friends from the slow boat. Next I went to the museum which was amazing. All in all, it wound up being a pretty good day.
I had befriended my roommates, a well meaning divorced dad who loved to ramble on about quasi intellectual topics and conspiracy theories (gone to hive fashion show night before), a sassy 19 year old Kiwi girl, and a down to earth Australian guy probably 10 years older than me. Our room was filled with lots of way-to-deep-yet-shallow conversations on art, tv, love, sex, prison, and more.
I couldn’t find them when I was supposed to join them for dinner, but there was a big lao dance and music performance at the night market, so I sat near the window of the same cafe i went to on my first night and enjoyed Pho, white wine, and a waffle with chocolate for dessert as I enjoyed a perfect view of the show.
When I first started to plan my Southeast Asia trip, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be packing all my stuff in a backpack. Midway through planning the trip, before booking my volunteer placement and plane tickets, I was sure I’d be using a rolling backpack. By the time everything was booked, and after reading about 8 million travel blogs, I knew that a real backpack for Southeast Asia was the only way to go. (more…)
In the frenzy of packing and getting prepared for my trip, I didn’t get the chance to blog as much as I would have liked about my proposed itinerary for my next 10 weeks in Southeast Asia. When I plan a trip, I usually try to opt for planned spontaneity rather than a strict itinerary. This means that I research a ton of options in each place I hope to go, and then can pick what to do when I feel like it once I’m already in each place. Southeast Asia makes it particularly easy to do this, with its low cost travel options and guesthouses. Now that I have a spare minute in my volunteer placement’s guest house in Chiang Mai, I can let you know what I’ve got planned, loosely, for the next 10 weeks:
I’m about to fly off to my Southeast Asia solo trip on the longest flight of my life for an exciting journey and life reboot.