Right now I’m on vacation, and I’m sitting alone at a Starbucks in southern Thailand waiting out a rainstorm. The power has gone out (again), my bag and I are soaked, and I am writing you on a laptop that is about to die. There is no internet to get a crucial bus leg booked, and I feel frantic to get unstuck and get out of here. I am hating traveling, regretting this Christmas vacation I had so consistently felt ambivalent about, and most of all I am wanting a home I don’t even have, which depresses me further.
This is what you’re not supposed to say about traveling, and you are especially never supposed to say it about traveling alone. Everyone wants to hear the stories of meeting random people who are amazing, of falling into madcap situations, of getting your claws in experiences that yield stories that taste sweet no many how many times you tell them. And sure, yes, I’ve had that on this trip in spades, and in the years I’ve spent living and traveling overseas, I’ve had more joy and luck and chance encounters than I ever thought I could have or deserve.
These are the times where I felt like everything was slowed down like movement trapped in amber; I could see the life going out of me and crystallising into that moment to make that memory live forever as a touchstone of why I do these things.
I crave my solitude and enjoy the freedom to have plans that aren’t really plans but no one but me can be disappointed if it all goes off the rails. I write in my head during all these solo hours spent in thought alone on buses and trains and (very rarely) planes. I anticipate what awaits me around the corner in the next country/hostel/city/party. I wander with stray dogs and creep through alleys and stumble on bookstores down side streets and hike through random national parks and eat whatever food I find. I do all of this without a smartphone or even cell phone service, depending on the kindness of strangers and compasses and paper maps. Most of the time, this all works out in a way that is benevolent and unearned. Most of the time, I am profoundly grateful, gobsmacked, even- I can’t believe working a job I love and then adventuring on frequent time off in foreign places is my life. Most of the time, it’s this good.
But the truth is that there is a trade-off to the unfettered freedom of traveling alone and throwing yourself into the wind with no plans, and that tradeoff often extracts a heavy price. The highs are really high, like outrageously silly high to the point where it feels like you are living in a movie starring your invincible, pulsing self shooting through life like a glorious comet. You are in it, whatever it is- flow, joy, peace. It’s that kind of high.
But then there are always lows, some dumpy low blah doldrums like when you find yourself sitting alone at a Starbucks in a blackout, hating everything: the entire concept of traveling; your stupid strappy backpack; hostels filled with other backpackers; the constant churning growl of train engines and bus gears and tuk tuk wheels; searching forever for passports and locker keys and checkout times; trading colored paper for different colored paper when an imaginary line renders it useless; and most of all, heading into each new place with that necessary burst of MAKE FRIENDS ENERGY!
And sometimes, more than these simply annoying things happen- sometimes really actually quite shitty things happen and you have no one with whom to commiserate, or from whom to get reassurance, or even help. Sometimes, the lows are valleys you just want to get through, and you forget that you were ever anywhere other than that valley.
Last night was a valley- I think this morning still is.
This dark Starbucks rainstorm refuge is most likely not presenting itself as a charming place to write because last night was bizarre, and exhausting, and I slept about two hours after not thinking I would make it here to Krabi at all. But first, let’s explore the high before this low, to really understand why the juxtaposition stings.
The day before yesterday I was ending an excellent week spent between Phuket Town and Patong Beach. Circus school all week for silks and hoop, city wandering, beach lounging, dancing, late nights, interesting people, two great hostels, hilarious banter, long stretches of alone time in quiet sections of town- it was all there. I was riding a wave of travel magic as I have so many times before. This came on the tails of a great start off in Bangkok at my friends’ hostel, the three brothers who always welcome me with open arms (and who come visit me on visa runs to Vientiane so I can return the hospitality).
Yesterday I left the group of people I met in Patong to head off to a new adventure. Here is where I should have pondered that great start in Bangkok, the stellar week in Phuket at circus school and the Patong at the beach, and considered the old saying “Two out of three ain’t bad” as I embarked on the third leg of this trip.
I left my traveling companions at the beach, as they drank out of coconuts and made plans for a hike. Right before I got on the local bus, I hesitated- maybe one more night? But my Swedish friends were leaving the next day anyway, so it seemed like as good a time as any.
The hour long open tuk truck through the hills to Phuket Town was wonderful. It was just me and a few local women who rotated on and off, cradling buckets or chickens or rice or children, sometimes a variety of all of the above. The hills were lush and green, the breeze was cool enough. In Phuket Town I had a two hour wait before my next bus to Krabi, and I killed that time writing in a sunny cafe, downing mango smoothies and green curry. All signs pointed to a clear road ahead.
This was all before getting on an enormous, 1980s looking bus that was belching black smoke and stuffed to the gills with more people than seats. This, dear reader, is where the low started.
The sun quickly left, the (unseasonable) rain quickly came, and we were soon in the middle of a torrential rainstorm- the headlights were pathetic probing fingers against curtains of water, comical amounts, sheets. Nonetheless, the bus diligently barreled through the hilly passes, plunging impatiently into the darkness as it overtook smaller vehicles, narrowly avoiding accidents several times. Whether from hydroplaning around sharp curves and fishtailing back into place, or almost colliding with a logging truck while passing a car on a hill, the combination of spiraling and nerves quickly left me a shuddering, car sick heap of anxiety.
Due to that whole “more people than seats” thing, someone I didn’t know was sitting on my lap, which was inconvenient for both panic attacks and puking. I needed a bathroom, but the door was locked. I stared into the black braid down the back of the stranger on my lap, who was also holding a baby. I willed myself not to vomit on this stranger and her baby.
The bus doggedly kept lurching, winding, slamming brakes, accelerating- the situation was overwhelming, uncomfortable, and inescapable. I thought it was just me who was on edge and counting down the minutes, until the entire bus exclaimed in cries of fear during the logging truck near miss. A volley of scolding rose up from the back, a confrontation of anger rare in this culture. I felt both vindicated that it wasn’t just me and more scared that it wasn’t just me.
The soundtrack of this scene was awful dance music, a dub step throbbing through the tinny, fuzzy speakers, filling the dense, damp air, seeming to hang and expand into extra special levels of sonic aggravation. This was punctuated with a mix of baby cries, cell phone conversations, and teenagers shrieking in laughter at shows they were watching without headphones. Through it all, the bus driver chatted with the bus attendant, while both of them were also somehow texting, oblivious to all of us who really depended on their attention to the rain soaked, darkened roads.
I wanted, with everything in me, to be on the beach back in Patong, or, even better, back home in Vientiane, having never embarked on this trip at all.
Eventually, finally, the trip was over. We ended up on the side of a stretch of highway- not, thankfully, in a wreck, but, unfortunately, at what passed for the bus stop. There was nothing distinguishing this patch of highway from any other, but somehow it was the bus stop, out in the middle of nowhere (or at least relative nowhere to me).
I had booked, so I thought, because I had been told, a bus that went all the way to my destination, Krabi. No, no it did not. It actually went to Trang, a town I had never heard of, which made sense when I was dropped there at 9:30 in the evening- it’s not much to speak of, for sure. The bus, due to the rainstorms and in spite of the breakneck driving, was delayed an hour and a half. By the time I got to my “bus stop” there were no opportunistic taxis or tuk tuks to be found.
The bus attendant dumped my bag on the side of the road, told me to look for a tuk tuk when I asked what to do, and then left unceremoniously, without so much as a second glance back. Two other people had gotten off with me, and they were quickly collected by friends waiting in cars- ah, friends, local connections, cell phones, what novelties.
I tentatively moved to ask them for a ride, but they also didn’t give me so much as a second glance, and in fact seemed to desperately wish that they would not have to deal with a beleaguered falang at all- I mean, fair. They drove off and I was left behind again.
I stood there under a weak yellow street lamp with my backpack on, sweating in spite of the night. I had left my water bottle in the bus station bathroom when I left, but I had assumed that I could get more at the bus stop. Clearly I could not, as ditches don’t sell water. I had heat exhaustion a month earlier, and the thought of walking who knows how long in this humidity without water made me shivery with dread. The only good thing was that the rain had stopped- the bad thing was that it could start again at any time, and I had not a scrap of rain gear.
I decided the best thing to do would be to make myself feel worse by thinking of my friends in Patong, who were either lounging in the hostel or at the cocktail bar dancing in the street, or perhaps already on the beach at night, talking while people set off lanterns over the water and fireworks burst off and on. I felt very, very alone. That’s because I was.
With nothing else to be done, I just stood and waited about 20 minutes on the side of this deserted highway in a random town in Thailand which looked for all the world like any abandoned meth town in the American midwest. I think I was waiting for something to happen to make a decision for me (or to fix it). There were no stores, and barely any traffic going past- I think I already set the scene when I said “side of the highway”, but just so we’re clear. Of course I had no cell phone service because I like the “adventure” of not having a cell phone when I travel, and therefore the adventure handed to me that evening was called “I Have No Idea What to Do and No One to Ask About That”.
So I did the only thing there was to do- I started walking down the road, having a vague idea from the gesticulations of the bus attendant that Krabi was further on “that way”. I felt marginally better once I started walking, because it felt like doing something. This feeling better was not to last.
The road split almost immediately, because this one simple certainty wouldn’t be allowed me tonight. I don’t know, nothing matters, I’m walking a highway in rural Thailand alone.
Let’s go right and call it Right in my head and hope the path rises to the nominative determinism of it all.
After a while a tuk tuk comes barreling out of nowhere, humid fog glowing eerily in the headlights, rattling and wheezing along the road with difficulty. Everything else is darkness. I am alone on the side of the road with just a backpack and no one knows where I am. This could be the beginning of any horror movie anywhere, and I am in it.
I am not feeling so intrepid or invincible anymore. If this is one of those moments in amber, it is equal parts existential dread and wide eyed WTF- not necessarily something you want preserved. I think of something my cousin says- “It’s too late outside to be a girl.” It’s too late for me to be anywhere else, too.
The driver pulls up and his eyes are sliding different ways, slowly, like fish circling a small container. Yabba, too much Chang Beer, random goodies from a pharmacy, who can say what he’s taken. He’s not sober in any way that gives me confidence in his driving, but I don’t have the luxury to demand that. I say Krabi, to which he says 30 minutes, 600 baht. I am somewhat relieved to see a license number on his windshield, even though by that I mean it is a piece of laminated paper to which I pinned my hopes and dreams of not being abducted. It’s this or waiting for another random tuk tuk to come out of the fog, after who knows how long, so I get in.
Every woman on planet earth knows what I did next- I pretended to call a friend on my phone that doesn’t work, as some sort of insurance that the driver will get me there since “someone is waiting for me”. He asked if I was ready. I was not, but I said yes (pretending he has interrupted my call with “my friend”).
And then we were off.
The next 30 minutes I spent clinging to the side of the tuk tuk as we charged down dark roads, the axle of the vehicle rattling to the point where we were rocking wildly. He drove very fast, he took curves very fast, I didn’t have the ability to fake the call any longer because I needed both hands.
Everything was a maze of dark pavement and every moment I was wondering if we were going to turn off in the jungle and I’ll slip out of this world, when suddenly we were out of pitch black side highways, and a town blossomed light and street signs out of the darkness right in front of me.
I’m here, I’m safe. I will not be found mangled in a ditch as everyone says “Why couldn’t she just stay home?” Excellent.
I needed wi-fi to get my hostel address, so I asked the tuk tuk driver to drop me at a Starbucks, which seems, after the hours of transit I just had, like some kind of symbol of salvation via commodified and branded civilization. Water was purchased, an address was found, many more tuk tuks clamoured to get me to where I needed to go, and all of this happened in the comforting bustle of a town, and not the side of a highway.
When I arrived, the hostel was quiet because it was late on a random Sunday. I tried not to compare it to where I just was, with Mama making smoothies and telling us wild stories about killing her husband(s). I went downstairs and put on a big friendly Texas smile despite being tired and sweaty and stressed after walking Thai highways. I was rewarded with four friendly new faces and an invite to go to a party on the beach. Yes. Yes is the only living thing.
Then I was in a tuk tuk again, the third and best of the day, in totally different spirits and circumstances. I danced for hours on the beach under the stars and then ran into the water with these people who took me in and took me out for no reason other than that I was staying in the same place. Things will change as they always do.
I woke up this morning thinking I would easily get these tickets, trusting last night’s unexpectedly good ending this morning as a sign, but no. Here I am writing to you, with no power, no way to buy tickets, and no hostel booked for the night. I am wet, in a way station, and I can’t do anything but sit here and be wet and wait.
Given that, here’s what might not make sense when I say it, but it’s true- I do this just as much for these exact kind of lows as for the highs I had a mere 12 hours before. I try to remind myself that no matter how low I get when traveling, no matter how often I hit a wall of dammit, I cannot, I just CANNOT, there is always another high around the corner. Always.
I never leave a trip without an experience that I could not imagine having lived without, and that is worth all the random Starbucks corners on rainy afternoons where I allow myself to slide into a self-pity wallow, looking for the first plane ticket home, only even that isn’t home, because Laos is just where I am now, and I don’t know where I’ll be next.
It’s not stable, it’s often not kind, it’s usually hard in some frustrating way, but you earn every shred of that investment back and then some when it all comes together and you’re back on the right side of things.
I mean it when I say I’ll take all the empty highways and loneliness in the world for the postcard shop in Estonia that ended up in three days of being adopted by local art students for impromptu house parties and homemade tours of Tallinn, or the hostel in Bosnia with Bata and his van, or couchsurfing with friends in Poland who returned the favor of my rescuing them from the ER after a motorcycle wreck in Tirana, or training aerial silks at the Lao National Circus after meeting a German backpacker at a local bar, or taking a spontaneous road trip up into the mountains of Albania where the US embassy says you shouldn’t go, or dancing all night in Serbia to wild music, or riding horses across Mongolian steppes, or watching shepherds tend sheep at sunrise on a mountain pass road trip break for cheese and coffee in Greece. I could go on and on. I intend to keep going.
It feels good to stand in those moments and know that you could have given up so many times before but you didn’t, and because you didn’t, your perseverance was more than rewarded. I love the way I am living now, but it can be hard, and stressful, and the reality is that I can’t do it forever, and I don’t want to be doing it when I’m older. I want to do it, and so I have to do it now.
I am grateful to be able to and I welcome every abandoned highway that gets me further down the road of these experiences I want to have. I am reminding myself to be patient. I can wait out the rain. It’s just a rest. The sun will be drying my face and my hair soon enough, and then it’s on to the next.
Post-edit: Two hours after I wrote that, I gave in to the futility of booking a ticket to leave and booked the next few nights to stay in Krabi and see what happened. I fell in with an amazing group of people (literally- I fell out of my top bunk heat sick and stumbling for Gatorade in the middle of the night, and my lower bunk mate woke up to the sound of my plop on the floor, helped me get in a cold shower, and fetched me Gatorade). Three more roommates rounded out the group, and we kicked off our time together with a feast of a breakfast before exploring on an island tour.
For the next three days we had more fun than I had initially thought would be possible in that funky little town. One of my fondest memories of this entire trip is the day we rented motorbikes, used a shitty tourist map, and drove all over the area down gorgeous two lane roads cutting through perfect green everywhere, before ending up at the best beach I’ve ever seen on New Year’s Day. We had it all to ourselves.
It ended with a sunset that blew me away. High again.
Originally published January 2nd, 2015 on Blogger. This remains one of my favorite New Year’s memories. Unbeknownst to me, this trip planted the seed of my eventual (completely unplanned) move to Sweden. A man I met at the hostel in Patong would end up traveling for a year with his girlfriend and renting his apartment to me in Tyresö. Exactly a year later, I rolled into Stockholm on January 3rd, 2016 to take an emergency vacancy teaching placement (a job which was shared with me over dinner at another hostel, in Bosnia, in October of 2015). A year after this trip, I found myself living amongst the possessions of someone I thought I would know for three days and never see again. Someone I had dinner with one night, in a crowd of other travelers, handed me a job lead for a country I never planned on visiting, much less living in. Your life is always happening all around you, the beginnings and endings overlapping, sometimes making the plans without you at all it seems. It’s January 3rd as I update this post, and I know the next few months of winter here in Kazakhstan, waiting for a vaccine in the summer, will not be easy. They might be a valley. But I know everything eventually goes up again.
