From my post-graduation backpack trip across Southeast Asia

http://nalishan.blogspot.mx/

This was my final post:

All good things must come to an end, and so my travels draw to a contented close. Three months spanned across seven countries, covered over 8800 miles and forty two various accommodations. I was blessed by a Buddhist long life ceremony, mastered my very first motorcycle ride, was almost blown up by detonating kilowatts of fireworks, gave English classes to Tibetan nomads, was blind-massaged by land mine victims, chatted with monks about their dreams of moving to L.A. and watched a stripper propel a ping pong from her vagina. I sneaked illegally onto the roofs of majestic temple complexes, bought pizza for withered women mourning the loss of their king, sat and prayed amongst the skeletons of genocide victims, and was attacked by screeching monkeys hurling boulders at my head. I have visited enough pagodas to last a lifetime, learned that “C’est parti mon kiki!!” is the French phrase de rigeur in Asia and that Obama is the “The Black Superman”; that Vietnamese boat crews cannot be trusted not to release sewage into the sea right where you are about to climb back on board, and that overzealous street-food curiosity leads to unfortunate consequences. Some journeys saw me cramped fifteen hours on jerking buses launching me to the ceiling with every tiny bump in the road, requiring a minimum of five layers of clothing due to inexplicable air conditioning. I craved my yoghurt and muesli breakfasts more than I ever thought would have been possible, was transformed into a laughing stock for groups of villagers and was chased out of a Cambodian forest by a crazed demonic ghoul.

We traveled by every form of transport known to man- aircraft, car, bus, motorbike, tuk-tuk, bicycle, horse cart, canoe, vans, pickups, ferry, shared taxi, train, rickshaw, pedalo, sleeper bus, and even a token Maserati thrown in for good measure (ah Bangkok…). To be frank, the pace and scope of it all was utterly exhausting; daytimes filled to the brim with discovery and exploration, and nights often unsleepable or at the least very disturbed.

But I loved every minute of it. The acquaintances gathered along the way, the radiant smiles shared with strangers, the seduction of so many novel flavors to the pallet, the natural wonders seen with the eyes and pungent smells assaulting the nose, the extraordinary stories heard, the widening of my insight into such a fascinating and relatively unexploited part of the world… Such moments are worth those times of hair wrenching frustration, of overwhelming fatigue, of physical discomfort and grueling lost-in-translation.

There is perhaps one overarching conclusion I would like to share… The real life and soul of a country cannot be found in guidebooks alone; visiting a sacred pagoda or an ancient tomb can only grant limited insight into what really makes a place tick. It is the people who inhabit it, how they live and think and interact with their environment and with others, that will make you fall in love. Someone else’s mundane tasks of fishing for snails in delta backwaters, or raking piles of drying long-grain rice onto the highway, might be their monotonous every day existence but to a traveler’s eyes it appears so foreign and fascinating, postcard-perfect, an absolute divergence from that grey cubicle or classroom seminar.

Countless times I enjoyed the journey more than the destination. So sometimes, put away your books, forget the itinerary, open your senses, engage in random conversations and just wander down that side road.