Am I lost in the world yet?
Wednesday, January 11th, 2006Well here I sit, having lived in Asia for approximately 15 months in the sleepy seaside town of Hitachi(yes, like the TVs), and I feel like my real Asian adventure is truly about to start. Japan has been an amazing experience, but this country is safe, clean, suffocating. I am ready to get out of here and get dirty. I’m turning in my English teacher’s tie and suit and trading them in for a backpack, some boots, and a map or two. I’ve bought the travel books and they’re all staying home. I’ve read them, and whatever was meant to stick in this brain of mine has either stuck, or wasn’t important enough, I guess. That’s the way I’m looking at it. Here we go.
The majority of my time in the past three months has been devoted to this trip. The best time to plan a trip is while you’re on one. I sometimes forget that Japan has been the first step in the larger international trip that I had wanted to embark on since I was a high school student. Since I finally sucked up and sold my shit and got my ass on the plane. It was so easy now that I look back on it. And now the first step is coming to a close, the next step planned. Japan has a big red check mark on it full of beautiful memories, and I can even speak Japanese! So what’s the next stop? That has been the million dollar question for me as well.
It started out that I was going overland and by ferry from Japan to Hong Kong via South Korea, Tianjin, and Shanghai with a buddy. Then on to SE Asia. Then we swapped the trip due to weather concerns. The Great Wall with a foot of snow on it didn’t sound very fun. Then my buddy backed out. So as it stands finally, I’m flying on February 6th from Narita to Bangkok for a few weeks of kicking back in Thailand. Sometime at the end of the month I’m flying to Kunming, China to do a bit of trekking in Yunnan province. Then across to Hong Kong, possibly stopping in the famed backpacker hangout Yangshou. I’m getting my TEFL certification in Zhuhai, China, near Macau during the whole month of March. After that, who knows. I want to see Shanghai and Beijing, slowly making my way back to Japan through South Korea.
This marks the moment of my life where I feel most free, most full of purpose, most focused. It may sound strange to most “normal” people that a young guy’s global wanderings can be self-described as focused. But that’s just because my focus isn’t going with the flow. I’ve saved enough money to be comfortable, and all of my stuff fits in a backpack. Every day I can wake up with the exhilarating expectation to see something new, meet someone new, speak another language, smell the smells, taste the tastes of all of that life out there. Japan has been a bounty, now what’s next. Bring it on.
Administrator