Recently, we developed a new game. When we're all talked out about anything and everything in our lives – and we can talk anything and everything to death – Emily and I have begun the "What was your…." game about our trip.
What was your favorite laundry? What was your most embarrassing moment? Who was your favorite person we met? What was the funniest moment? What was the worst bed? What was the best bed? What was the best drink? What was the most eye opening thing? What was the most shocking? What was the most underwhelming?
It's mid-May and as we talk about plans and upcoming events, we're talking about things at home more than in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand or Hong Kong. We're not mourning in any way, but we see the end of this chapter coming.
We have weddings to attend and babies to meet.
My best friend Mazyar and his wife Makameh are expecting a baby any day. We're sort of on edge. It's their first, Mac's had a rough pregnancy and she's having false labor left and right. If we were home, I'd want to be right there at the hospital.
We've begun making plans with friends and amazingly we actually have a vacation with Emily's family scheduled three weeks after we get back. It's kinda' ridiculous – but it's family and that's one of the key things we've missed this year.
Today was another day of doing what we have done so often on this trip – sitting at a cafe with a great view and working away on our computers. Today's view is Lake Hoan Kiem with it's green waters surrounding a small island with a pagoda. It sits at the edge of Hanoi's old quarter and is in Hanoi's cultural center. High up in a cafe on the fifth floor, we worked away in a light, homey room with mellow, if not sappy American music.
It feels normal – just an average workday.
That's what's fantastic.
Although neither of us are scrambling to get away from this life that we've come to so deeply enjoy, we're beginning to look forward to what's to come. We talk about places to live, seeing our dogs, renewing their vaccines, my work plans and what it will be like to be back in "real life."
Real life doesn't involve deciding which lake, ocean, rice field, garden, or backwater you want to look at while you work. It doesn't involve strolling around town on a Sunday afternoon and deciding to get a bubble tea just because it sounds refreshing. And it certainly doesn't involve taking a bicycle powered rickshaw (called a cyclo in Vietnam or a trickshaw in Penang) home when you get caught in the rain too far from home, but not far enough to feel good about using a taxi.
There's no doubt that at the end of a year, we have created our own reality.
Like all realities, there are downsides. I discovered in the years I lived abroad that life always catches up with you, no matter where you are and what you're doing. Although life has been extraordinarily kind to us, it brings its little trials and tribulations.
A company wants to talk to me about a job, but they need a certain set of specifications to the Internet connection I use for the video conference. Our hotel connection falls slightly below the requisite upload speed – though the download exceeds it easily. So, it means visiting the big name hotels like the Sheraton, InterContinental and Sofitel asking to test their Internet speeds.
We get some great beds, and some – like our current – that leave something to be desired. Going to the post office can be more of an ordeal that one might imagine. I actually have come to like comparing them. So far this trip – Singapore gets my top rating and India the lowly bottom. Thailand is surprisingly high these days.
Most significantly, we have begun to crave stability. Moving around every week as we have the past month has actually been tiring. We haven't moved this quickly since the very beginning of the trip in July and early August. Then we hit Bali where we stayed – in a house – for two months. We got a taste of not only stability, but a lifestyle – and then we jumped into what for us, is high gear.
We realize it doesn't make sense to most people that a week in a city or a country would be too little. We have found that different friends and family members get it more and less.
There are two things we've come to realize. It's near impossible to be a full-time tourist for a year. More importantly, we work. Emily has deadlines, grading and sometimes audio lectures. I need to be online at least four days a week to do my primary work – which at last count was more than 1050 articles for that client alone.
Working on the road is still working. Sure, we have the phenomenal ability to adjust our hours, change our work schedule, shift days of the week we work (most of the time) and to do it from anywhere with a decent WiFi connection. Best of all, when things are going well, we can sleep in a little, get done in the late afternoon and enjoy our surroundings a little each day.
When we set out on this trip, we didn't expect that so much of impression of a place would have to do with watching its everyday goings-on. We didn't know that so often, we would feel like we got a little snippet of what life in a place is like. In our two weeks with three weekends in Istanbul, we somehow fell in love with it – despite starting off wondering how we would spend two weeks in a place that seemed so strange and different. We somehow slipped into Istanbul's rhythm and it has come up as a highlight of our trip ever since.
However, the fact that Istanbul was a stable, easy place to work was a factor. Nepal would have been such a better experience if we hadn't needed to work. The constant frustration of trying to make things work took its toll.
Much to our surprise, Vietnam has been such an easy place to work. The Internet is of great quality and readily available. So, despite the moving around, we're pretty relaxed. But – a little to our horror – we've realized that in order to be responsible adults who feel we can manage our lives, we need some stability. And I want to shoot myself, just a little, for writing that. But it's true.
More than anything, Emily and I have come to realize where we are in life. We're on the edge of moving into a stage that involves kids, a mortgage, stability and all the joys and hassles that go with them. At the same time, we've become acutely aware that we don't want to just take it as it comes – we want to do it our way, as much as possible. We know what makes us happy in life. We want our kids to know the world and other languages. We also want them to know a solid home with family, friends and community.
We've come up with ideas. We're going to pursue responsible dreams and if we can, do things in a very unconventional, yet conservative sort of way. At least that's the one-line version of it.
This trip has been adventure, reflection, understanding, love, dynamism, creativity, reaching, stretching and a lot of fun.
Although the best is yet to come – because there's never any reason today or tomorrow can't be the very best of all – we're beginning to harvest the fruit of 10.5 months worth of experiences. It's delicious.
Sent from my iPad
