Universal Traveler

Just a dude with a backpack, a plane ticket, and a nasty case of intercontinental wanderlust.

Name:
Location: Minnesota, United States

Thursday, September 15, 2005

A Slight Change of Plans

Judging from my previous post, one would probably assume that my target destination for the near future is Laos. After all, it's a Lao visa that I've been waiting for all these days, right? Well, as the Flaming Lips might say, "suddenly everything has changed." Turns out I won't be going to Laos after all. Instead, I will go to Las Vegas.

Doesn't make very much sense, does it? Let me explain how this all happened.

While I was waiting for my Lao visa to process, I didn't feel much of an urge to go out and "see stuff," as I had already seen everything that I deemed worth seeing in Bangkok. (Not a very good attitude). So I spent most of my days...well, languishing. That's the best term I can think of to describe it. I think most people who have been here would agree that Bangkok is not a very good city to languish in, for reasons too numerous to get into here. But the end effect of it all was to put me in a rather pensive, reflective mood.

I started to ask those uncomfortable questions that travelers (universal or otherwise) tend to avoid. Questions such as Do I really want to go where I've planned? and Am I truly interested in this place? and Do I have the energy necessary to do these places/sights/experiences justice? and Just what the hell am I doing here anyway?

To which I answered "not really," "I don't think so," "probably not," and "gee, I really don't know," respectively.

I should also mention that I have observed a strange recurring phenomenon throughout my travels, whereby I might be hanging out in any particular location, having a good time, and then the mood suddenly turns stale and I get restless. This phenomenon culminates with me thinking to myself (pardon my French), "Christ, I've got to get the fuck out of here." Which I do. It's just that in the present scenario, "here" turns out to be anywhere other than home.

I initially assumed that there would come a time when I would realize I had traveled long enough. I had no idea when it would come, but I figured I'd run into it eventually. However, the longer I traveled without an inkling of such a feeling, the more I started to wonder if I was one of those folks that could travel indefinitely. A nomad. It's an intriguing thought, but a false one, apprently.

By now, I'm sure you can tell where all this is going. For better or for worse, it's time for me to go home.

David Byrne of The Talking Heads once elucidated the present feeling very precisely in a song called "What A Day That Was." Here's a lyrical snippet:

And if you feel like you're in a whirlpool
You feel like going home
You feel like talking to someone
Who knows the difference between right and wrong

And on the first day, we had everything we could stand
ooooooOOOOOOOooooooh, and then we let it fall
And on the second day, there was nothing else left at all
ooooooOOOOOOOooooooh, what a day that was


Oh, I almost forgot about the whole Las Vegas thing. When I called home to tell my parents that I'd be returning early, they mentioned that they were planning on going to Las Vegas (as a jumping-off point for visiting the Grand Canyon) in early October, and would I like to come along? Well, that sounded like good ol' wholesome family fun, so I jumped on the bandwagon. So on October 4 I'll be trading Bangkok for Sin City.

In the meantime, I have to make the best of my remaining time in SE Asia. Tomorrow I'm making the eastward slog to Siem Reap, Cambodia, which is the "base" for visits to Angkor Wat. I will admit that I'm not 100% gung-ho on the plan but, after all, it is supposed to be one of the most impressive sights in Asia, and apparently each year it becomes increasingly overrun by Japanese/Korean package tourists. I think it would be nice to see it before the highly unnatural presence of peace-sign-flashing, "Hello Kitty"-clad teenie-boppers is too much to bear.

After that, I think it would be the perfect time to find a nice, secluded beach on some coastal island. As luck would have it, this is pretty easy to do in Thailand. One last chance to lay out in the sun, collect my thoughts and otherwise while the hours away.

So I guess things are winding down, for my travels and for this blog. You can probably expect future posts to be less action-packed and more introspective than those in previous months. I think this is a natural consequence of my own effort to sort out the past 8 months and come up with some conclusions.

We'll see how that goes.