While I had made good friends in Beijing, I hadn't really made the the type of friends you go on a four-week holiday with. Drinking is one thing. A weekend camping is another. But girlfriends sometimes tend to look askance when a four week beach holiday is mentioned — often because they think they (rightly) deserve that holiday time.
But I refused to just go home for four weeks. Where was the adventure in that? That is not what I had signed up for. Chutzpah is not generally something I am accused of lacking.
That is when my Traveling Companion stepped up. He admitted to being in awe of my determination to do something exciting, and perhaps a bit ashamed that his first inclination was to go back home for lack of anything better to do. And perhaps (like all the good Boys in my life), wanting to help make sure I didn't come to harm along the way. So he invited himself along.
And while I recall being relieved at the time that I wasn't actually going to have to figure the whole thing out by myself, I'm not sure I was quite as grateful as I should have been.
Why was I not ready? Why did I think I was? I didn't know what to pack. I didn't know where to go. I didn't know the hotel reservation websites. Idiot know how to best used a guidebook. I didn't know how to bargain — well, I did in theory, but I wasn't any good at it. I didn't know about booking tours. About train tickets and bus tickets. I barely knew how to make it through Border Control. Visas? Holy crap! I didn't know who to ask for information. I didn't know how to keep myself amused for that long.
Don't misunderstand me. I traveled in the United States, and most of it alone. I can make a mix-cd and sing along with the radio and find the best road-side diners in all of the US to eat at. I can chat-up a bartender and ask a waiter for advice. I can find a bathroom that's clean and navigate a route (although my iPhone made that even easier). But all of that was in English. In my own country. I knew how to read the road signs (does the sign facing you mean the street parallel to it, or perpendicular?). It was easy.
But traveling alone in a foreign country is not always easy. There is no one to bounce ideas with or share transportation costs. It's harder to keep up a front against various touts and agents trying to to scam you into something. It's better to know Asia, at least a little bit, before you head off into the wilds of it alone.
Well, I've known some people who have done it, but they are braver than I.
Two years ago, when I went home for the summer (going home in the summer is OK; there is kickball in the summer), my brother-in-law asked me if I felt any different. It was a question I had asked myself, and the honest answer was no, I didn't feel any different.
But I'm not so sure that is the case anymore. I do feel different. I do feel braver, bolder somehow. I feel more assured maybe, is the word. I feel comfortable enough to bargain with a merchant, to laugh off a scam, to take a motorbike taxi, to cross the street.
Now, if only I could learn how to say "I'm not American, I'm Asian."
- Do you really care this was posted using BlogPress from my iPad?
Location:Indonesia
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