What’s Your Problem?

“It all went perfectly,” Emily said. “I even played it back and it was perfect.”

We were both relieved because if her live lecture this morning hadn’t gone well, we would have headed to Udon Thani, Thailand by afternoon to catch an evening flight back to Bangkok. I was half prepared to stage our first emergency evacuation.

It’s all because Laos has been playing games with our heads and our computers. Internet speeds are up and down like a yo-yo. When things are good, our hotel Internet speeds along. In fact, it’s the best Internet we’ve encountered in Vientiane.

However, Emily’s borderline obsessive speed testing has revealed a top speed of just over 2 Mbps – and that happened once. At home, we got no less than 4Mbps, although usually higher. The real problem is that it’s gone as low as 50kbps – at which point it’s completely dysfunctional.

Around town, there’s no shortage of cafes and restaurants with WiFi. None of them run as fast as our hotel, all fluctuate wildly and some have dropped even lower than our hotel when it hits bottom. Basically, the Internet here is manic depressive.

Like a manic depressive, we like the Internet better when it’s up. The problem is we’ll sit down at a cafe for lunch only to watch our Internet bottom out an hour later. Then it’s just a question of how long it takes to swing back the other way. We don’t have any digital lithium on hand.

Although I’m no network systems expert, I can’t help but think that the problem has something to do with the fact that the Internet service comes from Thailand. Our hotel manager told us that their top of the line Internet service is based in Chiang Mai and that when they have a problem, they’re on the phone to Thailand.

Sure, if you walk down the block, you can look across the Mekong at Thailand…but technologically, I have the sense that without a local server and resources, the infrastructure isn’t as solid as it could be.

That’s why we spent time yesterday drawing up our first-ever emergency evacuation plan. So far, in 11 months of travel, Emily’s live lectures have always worked out. But we wondered – so close to the finish line – if the jig wasn’t up.

Luckily, the hotel was having an up-morning and all went perfectly smoothly. While Emily lectured away in our room, I worked downstairs in the restaurant and all there was smooth as well. The hotel works out about 90 percent of the time and this morning was within it.

One more live lecture tomorrow and we should be home free. We already know Bangkok works and Emily will be done with this class before Hong Kong – which ironically would be the most functional of all.

The whole thing made me think about the challenges and problems of life. One thing I learned in my 4.5 years living abroad is that there’s no place life can’t find you. It’s possible to step out of time and space for awhile when you travel. You pass through, and float above the ground of the places you visit. The problems and struggles of people’s everyday life can often be invisible.

Travelers have no tie to the places they are and therefore no responsibilities or obligations aside from the basic human decency stuff. Therefore, the worst that can happen is you lose your passport, run out of money, have a problem with your bankcard, lose your wallet, have your bag stolen, get into a car accident – maybe get in trouble with the law. That’s kinda’ bad. But highly avoidable too.

However, once you stay still for awhile, life picks you up on its magic GPS. No one is exempt from struggle and responsibilities. No one gets away without facing painful choices, tragedy and life crossroads.

Emily and I are living between two plains. We’re traveled long enough that our travels have formed a life and a place. We deal with banks, accountants, taxes, and work politics (Emily much more than me). At the same time, we have few responsibilities, tons of luxuries and immense opportunities. I don’t have a real complaint in the world.

Travel is fantastic for helping with perspective. Go out in the world and you realize there are always some people who have it better than you (or so it appears), but there are a lot more people that would kill for what you have. At various moments in our travels, I’ve felt like the richest person I could imagine – for a variety of reasons.

It’s hard to spend an hour in Delhi and miss that you have it better than millions and millions, if not billions of people.

Even in a place like Laos where people are largely and amazingly content with what they have, it’s equally true that the Thai border may be the only one most people can cross and most people here will never do that. Plenty of people in Vientiane have stared at Thailand all their lives and never been.

There are Balinese who haven’t left their island. Made, the driver who has taken me and hundreds of other foreigners to and from the airport for years has never been on an airplane.

Meanwhile, there aren’t many – maybe any – places I can’t go.

I have health, access to good healthcare, education, opportunities, freedom and the means to follow my dreams and desires. Best yet, I have dreams and desires.

There are people who have and are exposed to so little that they can’t imagine anything outside of their paradigm. In India, for so many if you’re born low-caste, your life is foreordained. There’s no sense in hoping for more because there is nothing more.
Of course, it’s easy to have these thoughts when you’re traveling. We fly above it all. We have a bird’s eye perspective.

The question is what happens when we get home or a year after that and ten and twenty years down the line? What do we think when we’re changing diapers, washing dishes, going to mechanics, buying real estate, running to appointments, making career choices, holding the hand of someone in the hospital, talking to a doctor about something going on with a child, putting together college funds, figuring out the right thing to do in any one of a million situations, consoling someone, burying someone….?

In the pace of life in the paradigm we know and share with those around us, it’s both easy and natural to forget about the people dying on the streets of Delhi or the Thai girl from Buri Ram who prostitutes herself in Bangkok to improve her family’s lives and give her siblings a chance to get an education.

We don’t sit in the hospital with someone dying of cancer and think about how nice this hospital room is compared to the ones where bomb victims of the 2005 Bali bomb prayed to be stabilized enough to be transported to Singapore and Sydney for further treatment.

No one gets a call from the teacher to discuss how their kid is doing poorly in math or got in trouble on the playground and then laughs it off thinking, “It doesn’t matter – my kid goes to a real school with books and air conditioning.”

It’s just not how life works, is it?

Today, our biggest problem was whether the Internet would work during the right hour. To someone at home, it might sound absurd. I’m sure there will be a day when I’ll long for the days when this was my biggest problem.

And I hope that when I do, I’ll also think about which problems are real, and which are the things we invent to torture ourselves – like if I have an outfit for that event, or how will I get all the errands done, or how whether the kitchen needs remodeling (probably; you will eventually; and no – it never actually NEEDS remodeling). After all, life is hard enough – even for the blessed.

I’m not sure why life leads us into myopia. No matter what’s out there, we lead our lives within our paradigms. It seems to be how it works – and I think it’s okay. Sometimes the world only extends as far as the Mekong – and not an inch further. That said, every now and then, I’ll try to step out of life enough to remember that I’m blessed to have things as simple as choices, dreams and love – and maybe, if I’m REALLY lucky, a kitchen that needs remodeling.

Sent from my iPad