Help with Sunscreen
Living overseas finds sneaky ways of making regular distance relationships into long distance, even if only temporarily. Travel for work, to visit family, to be in friends’ weddings is that much farther and, therefore, warrants time apart for that much longer. With JD gone for a few weeks I am once again in Vietnam by myself. My sad, little self. All by lonesome, just like when I first arrived.
Only not. Unlike when I first moved to Vietnam by myself, this time I am not alone.
Whoppin’ Big Hong Kong
It hit me the moment I found myself wedged between an orangutan and an American flamingo in the middle of the Hong Kong botanical gardens: this is a city unlike any other. To sum up Hong Kong in one word it is Big. Huge. Humungous. Enormous. Colossal. Take your pick of fancy words that equal “big”. Is it overwhelming? Of course, but when you embrace this floaty sense of being overwhelmed it is absolutely incredible. Hong Kong is the definition of Big City.
12 Reasons Why Living in Vietnam is Like Living in a Frat House
You Wear Pyjamas All Day Long
They are, after all, comfortable. Can you really blame the slouchy 20-year-old frat boys or the 70-year-old Vietnamese women for wanting to wear them day in and day out? The only difference is that frat boys know they’re being lazy. Vietnamese grannies think they look quite nice. Matching top and pants? How convenient! Who cares if they have snoozing elephants printed all over them?
- You Eat Strange Things for Breakfast
In college it was cold pizza and the occasional mouldy Chinese take away from your roommate’s half of the fridge. Now it’s beef and noodle soup, chicken pate sandwiches or an entire coffee pot’s worth of caffeine in one small sip of Vietnamese coffee. It’s all good for you.
Traveling without Expectations
Today JD and I are off into the great unknown of Indonesia. I’ve packed my bathing suit, sunscreen and obnoxiously bright dresses. But this time I’m leaving something behind: expectations.
No, not completely. I expect things will be great. I expect places we see will be beautiful. I expect to swim and maybe even get an albino version of a tan. However the planning of this trip has been out of my hands. This trip comes courtesy of other people’s wedding. We are joining JD’s brother and sister-in-law on their honeymoon. Crashing it, really. They’ve done the grunt work of looking up websites and comparing hotel rooms. Now, we get to sponge off their labor like two lazy beach bums.
I love it! I love not knowing every detail, not quite remembering what time our flights get in or exactly where on the map we’re headed. I love not caring where we eat or even which temples we see. I love that I have no checklist in my head and no itinerary to read. I love how simple, basic and vague my expectations are.
I think this is what a holiday should be.
What Visitors Can Do
Having visitors come to stay with you can bring mixed emotions. Hopefully the visitors in question are people you actually want to see. Even so, it means playing host and changing around your own schedule to fit their holiday. It means finally washing some sheets and buying extra toilet paper. If you live overseas, it means preparing to help your friends and family adjust to your local oddities. At the end of their trip, you’re guaranteed to be a little lest rested than normal. So what makes having visitors so great?
The right house guests bring with them a whole new outlook on your home. They make you see things the way you saw them when you first arrived. Visitors force you to re-take those day trips you took when you first moved, and experience all the fun of the touristy things in your area. It’s also a chance to make new memories with old friends. A drawback of living overseas is that trips back home at Christmas are spent “catching up”. Having those same friends come to visit you means moving beyond the catch up and into time together spent laughing about what’s happening right now, rather than what happened when you were kids.
Nomads and Real Adults
Travel is an empowering verb. To travel is to challenge yourself, often to fail miserably, but also to find new self-respect in those moments when you master(ish) a new language, a new subway system or a new form of chili. Traveling forces you to put yourself out there and take stances on issues you didn’t know existed.
The downside of all this travel-induced decision making is that you can become a little too proud of standing on your own two feet. You feel like the master of the universe the day you can use a long drop without blinking an eye. You can take on the world the day you convince a Nigerian customs agent to let you through without your passport. You become a little too comfortable with knowing you’ll get from A to B, even if you don’t know exactly how.
Retracing Steps
Every year I interrupt my nomadic existence to go home, the place I grew up. Every Christmas the allure of exotic locales can’t manage to outshine the brilliance of Middle of Nowhere, Michigan. Funny what a nice family does to you. I crave corn fields over white sand beaches, and choose metro-Detroit potholes to a skydiving adventure elsewhere.
So it’s not that I’ve never retraced my footsteps. But up until now I’ve never re-visited one of the more exotic places I once lived. Then last month JD and I went back to South Africa. The reason: a fantastic family wedding in Johannesburg. Our detour to the city of Cape Town, where we spent three years together before moving on to Vietnam, seemed innocent enough. What I didn’t realize then was that an old home is like an old boyfriend: it can unexpectedly rekindle a fire you’d thought burned out long ago. Really, I should’ve known better. After two years as “just friends” on separate continents, JD and I were back together one second after we saw each other again. I have no excuse to underestimate South Africa’s charm.
Ready to Go
What’s that, Calendar? It’s vacation time again? Well, if you insist…
One of the most amazing parts of working at in international school in Vietnam is that you get time off for both Christmas holidays and Tet holidays. That’s right. After a mere three weeks back in school, I’m getting ready to pack up and jet off again.
28 Ways Travelers are All the Same
Being the first tourists ever to find ourselves hilarious, JD and I spend a good deal of our time in Siem Reap cracking each other up.
Angkor.
What?
Angkor Wat.
Angkor WHAT?
Wat.
In retrospect (and now that the beers have worn off) I pause to appreciate how un-originial we are…all of us travelers.
To travel is to widen the mind, to open the window of thought, to dive into the sea of knowledge.
If only.
What About the Mermaids?
Maybe kids are the ones who have it all figured out [insert moment of cliché teacher reflection]. Maybe we’re born with all the answers then manage to second guess them away over the years. The things kids say can be cute, ridiculous, but, sometimes startling profound.
I find that lately some of my best conversations are with nine-year-olds.
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