Dreams of the unknown ...again

In nature there exist certain patterns rarely broken - 1) There are people in your life that you will not hear from for months, years, until one day a mass email emerges, usually the result of that person heading on some far away journey that he for some reason believes your life will not be complete without the details of. 2) At the beginning of that email, those people will always apologize for the quantity of people in the "to" section, and for the impersonal nature of the email. 3) Many of the recipients will receive the mass emails with genuine apathy - one such statement a few years ago from a friend on this very list: "If you went just to tell people you went, then what's the point" - and the experience that the following individual obviously has: "I hope this correspondence will be more than one of those traveling dialogues, that can't help but become slightly arrogant while listing the sights seen or money spent while always finding it strangely appropriate that everyone know the weather patterns of where they are," or even just the "Good lord that's long, I don't want to read all that"So, as I begin what will no doubt be a torrent of informal mass emails, I'll begin with this standard fare: Sorry, don't read if you don't want to, blah blah blah. But I'll also say that these emails aren't wholly for you - they're for me as well. In traveling, no matter the location, the senses are inundated 24 hours a day. From the new foods, the new language, the new customs, the new aquaintances, new challenges, new flora, fauna, and yes, new weather patterns, it becomes difficult to find adequate time to simply sit and reflect. To examine in one's mind what has happened, and what he wants to happen tomorrow, or the next day. The mass email also allows me to simply escape from the new back to the ordinary. It provides a platform for escape back to my biscuit-eating, comfort-loving easy-chair lifestyle for just one moment. And after all, even after climbing the highest mountain or escaping to the depths of the unknown, who doesn't enjoy a cold beer? Well, this is my cold beer - a conversation with friends. And if I can have that conversation with all of them at once - all the better.

So in words transcribed by Salman, and introduced to me by Mr. Winkler (though I may butcher this quote), "What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to see....the traveler...if in [him] we did not see our most basic needs, we would not reinvent him repeatedly in movies, books..." Here I am, the traveler. Pushing my limits, sort of. But really just trying to understand what I don't yet understand. This quest for whatever may be brought into my possession a ticket to Thailand (one-way, of course), where I immediately encounter just what I subconsciously knew I would - partying tourists and people waiting to steal their money away for services and items they do not need - including all the crap they paid thousands of dollars to fly halfway around the world to get away from - a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast, for example, when two meters away the locals dine on their rice noodles, fish sauce, peppers, and something resembling fat, but texturally more reminiscent of intestines, though for lack of fluency in Thai, I really have no idea. So we got the hell out of there. If Khao San Rd. never comes into my life again, I will not be disappointed. And as we crossed the Border into Laos (The french, ever enamored with unecessary letters, added the "s". Spoken and written, it's correctly "Lao.") we found the guidebook to be correct (a phenomenon I find more and more annoying - for if the guidebook knows it to be true, just where is this "unknown" into which we endlessly strive to launch ourselves?) - we took a big sigh of relief. The people here are kinder, hassle you less, are more fair in their treatment. The landscape is infinitely more impressive - more as you would expect indochina to appear - rice fields expanding hundreds of yards to the base of limestone cliffs culminating in mountain peaks - if you can call them mountains, closer to pillars, perhaps. They put the devil's tower to shame.

After talking to who we could, and riding bikes to spectacular caves. And after almost wrapping myself in a spiderweb created by its master almost the size of my face. And after enjoying papaya salads, and Lao Beer at the riverside bungalo (which we gladly tossed ourselves into). And after passing thousands of buddhas (in caves, temples, streetsides, mountainsides), and hundreds of small villages that we long to enter and understand, we now sit in Luang Prabang - a tourist haven (though less than others, a haven nonetheless), trapped within our own lack of proficiency in the Lao tongue. We learn more everyday and strive for as complete a understanding of this place and what it means to be Lao (an utterly impossible feat to accomplish before the Visa expires - a mere 15 days).

And so far, the journey has been excellent. And I'm only Five days in.