Tuesday, August 31, 2010

More Developments

"I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets." - D.H. Lawrence

Maybe I'll just start every entry with a quote, now wouldn't that be educational and inspirational? 

But first, a poem...

The Double Life - by Don Blanding
                                                                                
 How very simple life would be
 If only there were two of me
 A Restless Me to drift and roam
 A Quiet Me to stay at home.
 A Searching One to find his fill
 Of varied skies and newfound thrill
 While sane and homely things are done
 By the domestic Other One.

 And that's just where the trouble lies;
 There is a Restless Me that cries
 For chancy risks and changing scene,
 For arctic blue and tropic green,
 For deserts with their mystic spell,
 For lusty fun and raising Hell,

 But shackled to that Restless Me
 My Other Self rebelliously
 Resists the frantic urge to move.
 It seeks the old familiar groove
 That habits make. It finds content
 With hearth and home — dear prisonment,
 With candlelight and well-loved books
 And treasured loot in dusty nooks,

 With puttering and garden things
 And dreaming while a cricket sings
 And all the while the Restless One
 Insists on more exciting fun,
 It wants to go with every tide,
 No matter where…just for the ride.
 Like yowling cats the two selves brawl
 Until I have no peace at all.

 One eye turns to the forward track,
 The other eye looks sadly back.
 I'm getting wall-eyed from the strain,
 (It's tough to have an idle brain)
 But One says "Stay" and One says "Go"
 And One says "Yes," and One says "No,"
 And One Self wants a home and wife
 And One Self craves the drifter's life.

 The Restless Fellow always wins
 I wish my folks had made me twins.
                                                                                

Fitting as it is, the restless fellow always wins.

After researching some guide books for my upcoming trip, and there are a plethora, I have still not decided on which to take with me, or if I even really want or need one?  I have however decided that from Siem Reap, which is the city nearest Angkor Wat, I will travel south towards Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia.  I will spend one night there, hopefully with a CS host, before heading south down the Mekong by "fast" boat to Chau Doc, and from there on a bus to HCMC.  I don't plan on looking for work immediately, but instead travelling around southern and central Vietnam for a week or two.  I have been talking to people who are in HCMC teaching right now and have offered to help me find work when I arrive.  All have said that it shouldn't take more than a few days to get work lined up.  This is all good news, and only gets me more excited about the trip!

My plans are obviously still a work in progress, though I prefer to keep them loose, lest I get myself all hung up on seeing something at a specific date and time.  What sense would that make? It's supposed to be an adventure, and I am going to treat it as such!  Of course it will probably be a little bit scary or stressful at times, being in a foreign country knowing very little or none of the language, but the exhilaration of it all will certainly overcome the fear.  I believe that with a good attitude, open mind, and kind demeanor, I will have no problems navigating to anywhere I want to go.  I've met a handful of travelers who have been around the world by themselves and have all given me the same advice, so I have to believe it's true.  

Although some would have us believe that it's a scary world, I strongly disagree.  

The world is what we make of it, as the Buddha said: "We are what we think.  All that we are arises with our thoughts, we make the world."

I am going to make the world a better place, I am going to help people live a better life.  I don't know when, where, what, or how, but they will all work themselves out with time.

Not to end it all on such a heavy note, but that's all for today!  Back to more HW and preparation. 


Friday, August 27, 2010

The Beginning

"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life." - Frederico Fellini

As many of you may know, I love quotes and quotations, because for most things we seek to say, somebody with a much more superfluous way of speaking has probably already said it quite poetically.  After all, the wise learn from the mistakes - or creations - of others.  Be ready for a lot of good quotes!

I'm starting this blog now with the idea of continuing to update it as I travel Southeast Asia and hopefully beyond in the coming months and years.  The thoughts of this trip have consumed many waking and some sleeping moments over the past year or more.  I have always had a passion for travelling and learning about new cultures, people, places, ideas, perspectives, you name it; never before have I had the opportunity to really do anything about it.  This is my chance, and I plan to make the most of it.

The plan is to fly from Seattle to Bangkok, where I will stay for a couple days and arrange visas for the remainder of my trip to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam.  I will try to use www.couchsurfing.org as much as possible on this journey, to enrich and expand the experience.  Minimizing cost is also a nice side effect.  I am planning to travel from Bangkok towards the Aranyaprathet/Poipet border crossing into Cambodia towards Siem Reap and Angkor Wat.  From there I am undecided specifically, I may head north to Laos and have a more extended adventure before reaching my final destination, or may head east to Vietnam and work my way south along the coast.  This is something I will be planning out over the coming weeks through research and reflection.  This blog, and the journal I am keeping on my own, will surely provide some of that reflection.  By the time I leave I hope to have a file for GoogleEarth set up so that people can follow me as I go, though it may prove to be a bit ambitious.

For now, that's all folks!