How does it feel to be on your own with no direction home? Like a complete unknown... How does it feel? It’s exciting. It’s scary. It’s shocking, educating, strange, lonely, ridiculous, frustrating. It’s rewarding. Thus is my life. In the past two and a half years I've lived on three different continents. Since the summer of 2009 I haven’t stayed in one place for more than 6 months at a time. The past 8 weeks I’ve been moving around so much I sometimes forget all the places I’ve been. And now I'm here in Bangkok, in my apartment, relaxing – and it feels weird. When you live a life where the only constant is inconsistency, you sometimes forget how nice...
The sky is blue and pure in every direction. The sun is total and burning and just right there, and today is a beautiful day. This bottle of beer and I are reclining on one of the many sandy beaches of Koh Chang. It’s some day between Thursday and Sunday. It’s some time between 9am and 9pm. That’s all I know, and that’s all I care to know right now. In places like this, the only time that is important is now. Everything else is irrelevant, unworthy, forgettable. So if this entry seems rambling or distracted, remember it’s not my fault. I blame it on the waves and the sun and the sand. And most of all the beer. This...
It’s so dark... Blackness… I can’t see my hand in front of my face, but there are hundreds of voices all around me. The buzz of the jungle insects is constant. It’s been like this for almost an hour when I finally begin to see the outline of the world’s largest religious structure against the dark early morning sky. The cameras start snapping pictures and they don’t stop. Slowly the towers become more visible as the darkness fades. I can now make out the banks of the reflecting pool directly in front of me. The magnificence of the temple grows as the minutes tick by, and eventually I am able to completely behold the beauty and majesty of the scene...
As I lay sleepless in my small room on the top floor of a Cambodian guesthouse, the chop and whirl of the ceiling fan above me, for some reason, of that song by the Doors. “This is the end. My only friend, the end.” The end of what though? It seems like a song about beginnings would be more appropriate. This is my first night in Southeast Asia. My brain feels cracked and scrambled from the 40+ hours of travel it took to get here and the 12 hour time difference from back home. It has become evident that no amount of exhaustion is going to overcome this jetlag tonight, so I figured I would just write until I’m delirious...
Upon writing this entry, I have been home from my last adventure for exactly one year to the day. The adventure I speak of was a life changing six-month study abroad experience in Valparaiso, Chile. In the time since my return I have concluded one important chapter of my life by graduating from college, but now with the prospects of grad schooling, job searching, and career building looming ever closer, I decided one last great adventure is in order before its time to get serious. So here I find myself less than two months away from leaving for Cambodia and Thailand. While abroad, I'll be working as an English teacher as a means to help with the costs of travel...
