TRAVELING ALONE

I had a few beers this afternoon with Johnny Ho... but I'll get to that later.

I got the hell out of Phuket on Sunday. Not that I don't like it there, but when I found out that I had three weeks off until I started teaching, I all of a sudden got that traveling itch, and I wanted to travel alone. I kind of had it in my mind that I would be heading up to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, but when I got to the Phuket Airport and found out that there were no more tickets left, I was forced to explore my options. The Air Asia ticket counter said they had a flight to Kuala Lumpur that evening, hmmm? I ran down to the airport bookstore to see if they had any travel guides on Malaysia, they did, and so that was my deciding factor. I bought the ticket and spent the next few hours reading about where the hell I was going... I also met a few girls from LA in the bar, traveling alone is cool, and man do I love California girls.

I've since left Kuala Lumpur and am now in Georgetown, on the island of Penang. Malaysia is pretty cool. I will update the blog later with pictures and stories of my travels here, but for some reason I've been inspired this evening to express some of my thoughts on traveling alone. I like it. I like traveling alone. I find myself smiling a lot. I mean, it can be rough at times, but overall I think it's good and healthy. Traveling alone with no expectations is great too, I had no idea what the hell Penang was like until I got here. It's hot, sweaty, unfamiliar, confusing, and bigger than I thought... kind of like a lot of southeast Asian cities. But these hectic surroundings don't intimidate or scare me, I don't have to think or worry about anyone else but myself. When you're on your own, there is nothing to slow you down or speed you up, you can find your own pace and run with it. You can feel hungry and grumpy and not worry about annoying anyone else, you can sneak into a Subway and eat a B.M.T. even though the food in Malaysia is supposed to be amazing (sorry, dad), and you can stay in the most budget of budget places because there is no one else but yourself to see the cockroaches in the bathroom. What I see and experience here is so different from what I am familiar with that it in no way connects me to what I know, nothing here forces me to think about anything that I don't want to think about. I can let myself think about whatever I want. I can let my mind wander. I actually find myself thinking about a lot of really dumb shit, like really dumb. But whatever, I don't have to share it with anyone else. "Penny for your thoughts...?" Hell no, not when you're rolling solo! I pay attention to the bustling traffic, the motorbikes and buses... I notice the charm of the British colonial architecture and the old trishaw drivers that pass by, but I feel no sense of urgency, no immediate worry. I'm in between chapters of my life right now, I know where I came from, and I have no clue where I'm going. It's really, really exciting. This is just what I needed.

So now I will press the "publish post" tab. Shit. maybe I will take this down later, I didn't really expect to post stuff like this, but whatever, I guess that's what a few afternoon beers will do...