I try to avoid watching travel shows because inevitably wanderlust creeps in. What's wanderlust for me? It's that nagging tug at the corner of my heart that tells me I should be out, well, wandering aimlessly. The funny thing is, whenever I'm out wandering aimlessly, I'm constantly thinking about other things I'd rather be doing, like creating art and working at home.
The grass is always greener, and I have to remind myself of that truth before my mind runs away with my heart!
What's this week's 3-on-3? Three random memories from my travels:
First of all, I miss the warm waters of Vietnam. I took a boat cruise/tour out to Ha Long Bay and as one of our activities, we all got to jump off the boat and into the warm water for a swim. It was easily 10- to 15-feet high but I wasn't scared. Up until people were yelling at me and the guy who jumped right after me to swim away from the jelly fish, anyway. I swam up to the boat like a champ! (Unfortunately, someone did get stung. No, no one peed on it to make it better. Not that I know of, anyway.) That night, a few of us laid out under the stars talking about anything and everything. One of the kids (read: he was 20, ha!) mentioned that he had never seen a shooting star before. We saw about a dozen within the span of two hours. It was magical.
Secondly, while in Siem Reap, I commissioned a tuktuk to take me around the temples. After getting to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise (beautiful!) and walking around, I went out to the taxi-parking area to look for my driver. Nowhere to be found. After about 15 minutes, I met a Finnish who had the same problem. We ended up sharing a tuktuk on the rest of our temple-visiting adventure. Luckily, we both had equally short attention spans, and didn't mind cutting the trip short. How people can spend days on end exploring the temples is beyond me. I guess I don't have a deep love for old architecture.
Finally, SCUBA diving was intense. Correction: SCUBA lessons were intense. The actual diving and swimming around with the fishes? AWESOME! So I took a course in Nha Trang, Vietnam. It was run by a Russian dude (he's pretty cool) and I was taught by a Frenchman (also very cool). At one point, my teacher whipped out his waterproofed PADI certification instructions and started translating it from French to English for me. He says, with a heavy French accent, "Oh, I forgot to tell you, don't forget to [something kinda important]." (I don't remember now.) But DUUUUUUUUDE. REALLY??? I'm already scared about possibly BLOWING UP MY LUNGS, do we really need to be playing games here? Sure, I panicked a few times but it was all in good fun. :) Fun times, fun times.
At the end of the day, yeah, it's cool to see all the sites. I think a part of me always felt restless because I felt like there was this thing in me that needed to explore, to see, to experience, and to know that I could do it all. I can. I can stand dirty bathrooms, high likelihood of food poisoning (never happened!), sleeping outdoors, taking cold showers, living out of a backpack, and meeting strangers who become fast-friends. At the same time, I had a really weird moment a month ago when I was walking my dog, Fi. I thought, "If I did this everyday, and this was my everyday, could I do it indefinitely?" And the answer was a reassuring and comforting, "Yes." Hello, Maturity.
A corner of my heart will never stop wandering, though. I'm just stupidly happy that I now have someone to wander with.
Ha Long Bay. Wish you were there. For real!
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