The mantra rings out in my mind, echoing off the walls in a reverberant shudder that dominoes its way down the bones of my spine. Lost in a whirlwind of feeling, the actions of an emotion suppressed, the chaos and fury of something pressurized. A painful release. I’m in Saigon in Vietnam, and it’s time for change.
Earlier that week I had been in Cambodia, marveling at the wonders of Angkor Wat and contemplating the plight of desperate innocence in Phnom Penh. Now, despondent and disheveled, I boarded a plane alone. Now as the gentle keystrokes of a soft piano, the sad tones of a story sung through trauma. Let us retrace our steps, as it has been quite some time and quite some change since I last blogged.
Last time we chatted, I had just left Myanmar, swollen with an experience that was equal parts entrapment and enlivening. I felt ensnared by the plight of a people who had lost a genetic birth lottery. I had tried to give where I could, but to no actual improvement for those concerned. It’s an exhausting concept I hadn’t prepared for. I felt as a matchstick burnt out, the light extinguished to leave a warm ember.
In lieu of these feelings, I decided it was important for my development to go somewhere a bit more temperate and comfortable and regain some sort of self control. We flew into Samui, where I adopted a natural foods diet, pumped weights at the gym and started in-roads into changing the old tapes that have been playing in my head since childhood.
Setting up positive habits and change was an important step, as up until that point I felt scolded by life like a sad preteen chastised by mother for touching his wee wee. Through my growth, I now felt I could grip my manhood triumphantly in the face of criticism, with self belief and with minimal ego. It’s uplifting. When everything changes, change everything. It’s not easy growing a pair.
Flying into Phnom Penh in Cambodia was an intense culture shock. The easy smiles of the people there shone beyond the violence of their political history. It must be a heavy cross to bear. I visited the killing fields just outside of the city, where thousands of innocent men women and children had been murdered systematically in the night by torchlight to the musical backdrop of traditional Khmer music and the slow rumbling of a diesel generator to power the speakers. It was chilling. On the way to the fields, my driver had taken me to a shooting range where I could fire a rocket propelled grenade if I saw fit. I couldn’t justify the expense, and in any way I looked at it the whole exercise seemed a tad inappropriate. It’s like playing obvious air guitar at a funeral as they belt out the final tragic song. In my mind, it’s a Bon Jovi song on the speakers, so the sadness of the situation deepened in me. My poor tortured brain, but more so these poor tortured people.
Escaping the desperation of a tortured past and, in some cases, a tragic present (I had never seen so many prostitutes) we travelled up to Siem Reap, which borders the magical temples of Angkor. My childhood dreams had long been filled with imaginings of these temples ever since my father had read to me the Readers Digest Book of Facts. The fact that it was a book of facts and not a book of Spot the Dog Goes to the Circus goes a long way to explaining why I am such a sniveling nerd. I still remember the picture in the book clear as day, and here it was right through the scope of my vision, the smirking mug of a popular old king from a moment long passed. I saw the need us men have to be famous, to have something live on after we are but ions bouncing around in an aerated earth soup. Us men, what vain idiots. Stop worrying about the time after your time, you’ve either got loads more stuff to worry about or nothing at all depending on how you were raised and what crazy hat you wear in the weekends. There are way too many life insurance ads on the box, let us fight this terrible daytime television menace with the voices of our non compliance.
With Angkor Wat crossed off the bucket list, our next stop was Vietnam, specifically Saigon. I’d heard great things about Vietnam, with its beaches and coast and traditional ways, its history and tales of adventure. Turns out it was not to be, there were other things developing.
Life is the combination of many small things, but every now and then these things culminate into a single moment, and the weight hangs heavy in our throats. This was one of those moments, and with a heavy heart, one single unit ripped and crackled into two separate components. We boarded separate planes at the same time, parting ways at the airport for opposite gates like the low emotional point of a chick flick minus the Dawson’s Creek theme song. No laughter, no smiles, just the incomprehensible weight of sudden and immediate change. I could not forget the experience if I tried, nor would I want to. My memory shall treat that love fondly, and I know this as much as anything else.
So to truncate and summarize these past couple of months, it’s change. When everything changes, change everything. I haven’t written in a while because I have been too busy searching and contemplating, hurting and laughing, putting one foot in front of the other and changing everything.
I had an old acquaintance tell me the other day that my experiences are no more special than the next guy, that I have not accomplished anything different or amazing or helped in any way. As she is extremely well traveled and seemingly level headed, I respected her opinion enough to pursue the question. Am I wasting my time feeling what I’m feeling in a situation that is mundane? Do I think I’m special or better or more of something than the next guy? Am I just another wayward soul, running and fleeing the inevitability of my own unhappiness?
It didn’t take me long to realize that even the most amazing adventures are mundane for someone. The guides that have toured me round these amazing scenarios have just had another day in the office. They too punch the clock at the days end for after work drinks sharing trial and tribulation. I saw in some of them the same contempt as the kids working in KFC on a Sunday, nursing others in a cushion of gravy-like magic to blunt the hangover they were too undoubtedly suffering from. How could this be that my guides were not awed every day with an office that includes the tree tops of Thai rainforests, or the temples of Angkor or Bagan, sitting in the embrace of implausibly large elephants or fishing the waters of Inle Lake with the majestic mountains as their backdrop?
And then I saw an infant in a simple food court, sitting on his father’s lap flicking a piece of plastic from a water bottle on the table with more excitement and joy than a pasty faced Korean teen with the new World of Warcraft expansion set. I realized then that everything is amazing in life if we can hold onto or remember that childlike sense of wonder. I am forever trying to see the beauty and magic in it, and hope that I am able to convey that at least at times to you through this blog. If anything, I’m doing this simply to get better at telling the story because that’s a part of who I am becoming.
My travel is secondary to the conclusions I find in myself and the lense from which I perceive the events that shape them. You can travel the whole world and it will widen your perception, but the only control you have if this is your only avenue to enlightenment is the next adventure, the next trip, the next destination. In this way, travel can become addictive, and the ever changing scenery and experiences make it easy to become cynical about the mundane, the normal, the average, even though it is just as amazing as the plastic wrapper from the water bottle. We're all just big babies at heart, "growing up" in this way is a great tragedy. I’ve seen it lots on this trip but bless them all, because it’s better than nothing.
Thanks for coming along, I’ll keep writing if you will keep reading. xo
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