On sequels

I had mixed emotions of returning to SE Asia and later Bimini’s Sharklab this past winter.  Eight months since I left from Singapore via Manila and I was back in Singapore on my way to Bali.  Like Manila, you aim to leave Bali as soon as possible.  If the bedbugs in Sanur don’t get you, the lying-to-you-face-and-smiling-about-it locals will.  Spectacular diving made up for the Philippines and Indonesia’s lackluster food – compared to Vietnam and Malaysia’s street eats – while men throughout the region with the same leery lineage had me second guessing.

Returning to two areas I’d previously enjoyed, I was reminded of Heraclitus of Ephesus that you can never step into the same river.  Amid my transient lifestyle with supporting tattered, water stained passport and scattering of friends, family and lovers around the globe I was surprised that I’d purposefully chosen to visit the same place twice.  

Feeling SE Asia’s pull through the previous summer coupled with the dissatisfaction I’d neglected significant pieces and places and feeling a homesickness for a place that wasn’t my home, I observed a rare place fidelity.  The diving kept me entertained as I climbed into Robyn’s wetsuit and followed her fin kicks all over Indonesia, the food in Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam made my tummy smile but I didn’t clichély “return for the people.”  

Quite the opposite.  There were plenty of people who legitimately could have held me in Canada.  A budding relationship with an are-you-real? man; a returning-from-where-I-wanted-to-go cousin; a previously incarcerated brother desperate to fall into a support net; girlfriends getting engaged, having second children, looking to sell their first home; a mother who, like me, cries at each parting.  

Lonely Planet co-founder Tony Wheeler’s “all you've got to do is decide to go and the hardest part is over” bounce through my head as I contemplate where I don’t know I’m going against what, where and who I’ve (temporarily) left behind.  

Attempts to adequately stay in touch are in place but exchanged emails and unreliable postcards home cannot rival the former ease of daily life.  Even if I chose to dive into the time consuming and frustrating Skype, all would continue to be a tease of the former intimacy enjoyed amongst friends and family.
 

Friend and fellow wanderer, Steph, celebrates the advancements in communication currency.  I, too, am pleased that I can chat online and mobile phones (that are financing a civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo) are more widespread than passable roads but I grieve the loss of travelers congregating in the common room with nothing to do until someone produces a pack of cards or, more likely, a box of wine.  

The wanderlust incest is still alive and evident as I bumped into a lifeguard from Bonnie Doon pool on Koh Pha Ngan the next bungalow over.  “Small world!” we exclaimed.  Boarding plane four of five to the other side of the world months later I’m reminded that the world, is in fact, still a very large place.  

Fifty-four hours from Bali to Calgary – the majority of those legs likely plagued by at least one colicky baby in the cabin.  WestJet’s timely April Fool’s joke of announcing child-free cabins was an outward expression of not only my mile-high and, if online forums are to be believed, many other travelers’ grievances.  My compliments to a girlfriend who drugs her children for air travel.  

While 15 hours of plane travel amounts to a considerable distance, the same cannot be said of non-air travel.  In the same hours required to cross the Pacific, Robyn and I traveled from Sabang, Mindoro to Sugar Beach on Negros and were still in the same country!  We took multiple boats, an airplane, a jeepney, a tricycle and numerous there’s-space-in-the-aisle buses.  

While I’ll likely be back in SE Asia – possibly as soon as this winter – I can’t prematurely predict the same for the Sharklab.  While the cast had changed from my previous stint in 2010, the spectacle had remained the same.  Collectively lured to Bimini by the possibility of a spectacle, the tears on the porch as I bid the stayers-ons farewell, were for the cast that had enriched my life.  I had arrived with the expectation of extraordinary experiences, and more than fulfilled, hummed Colin James’s “Just Came Back to say Goodbye” as I was driven to the airport to begin taking the long way home – where ever that is...

On returning

“Welcome home!! Whatever that means these days,” reads an email from a childhood and dear friend who is similarly ailed with itchy feet. I smiled, resolved to ring her and was pleased that she gets it. It being that “home” is no longer a physical place and likely will never again be the geographic location of where we grew up. “Back to where I started” is my preferred phrase because it accommodates a degree of vagueness and openness to interpretation. It also solidifies the self-imposed limbo I live in.

Rarely in one place for more than four months (eight months if uni years are considered) for the last eight years, I am never completely anywhere. Both feet are often firmly planted elsewhere – one in where I just came from and the other in where I’m off to next. While this caters well to my anticipation for upcoming events and desire for reflection, a wake of disposable, temporary relationships inevitably follows as individuals I know turn into people I knew. In a constant struggle to create, never mind maintain previous social circles I repeatedly leave friends, lovers and family scattered about the globe in favour of reckless rushes into the unknown.

When I return to previously created communities I paradoxically expect and inwardly hope I’ll be walking in as I left. Warmly welcomed and easily integrated back in, I’m shocked when all has seemingly changed. Friends are in or have fallen out of serious relationships, working on producing a CD or house shopping, work supervisors retire, coworkers suffer incomprehensible romantic trials, lovers turn into someone else’s, uni houses are populated with other students and the price of beer has skyrocketed.

While grappling to grasp these new developments and comprehend friends likewise venturing out to far-flung ports and outposts themselves, little has mercifully changed too. My aunt still loyally recommends novels, a friend who has always wanted to be more than a friend is still keen, Bonnie Doon’s handsome Tuesday morning aquasize instructor from more than a year ago is still not only teaching but recognizes me, my sister continues to make irresponsible (but remarkably sexually safe) decisions and my mother is pumped at the prospect and actualization of my return – even if it’s just for awhile.

At either end of a travel or binge work contract, as I cycle caulk boots and ribbon for dive masks and quick-dry towels, I find myself begging for that one concession novelist Zadie Smith says we rarely get more of: time.

Time for another dog walk with Gough, who truly and unselfishly means it when he says, “anything for you.” Time for another crib game with Brenda. Time to explore another temple with just-met-yesterday friend Lindsay. Time to hungoverly linger on the pier with Dan as crab traps are pulled up. Time to crawl under Robyn doing back stretches next to a bomb shelter. Agreeing with Smith’s husband Nick that time is how we spend our love, it is the shelter of each other she writes of that truly is the greatest place to return to.

Abroad and where I started, it’s about connecting with people. Sure, I’m embedded in stunning scenery in both places, but it’s not the rolling hills in Laos I pine for, or the glacial lakes of northern B.C. that quietly and persistently beckon me back, or Scotland’s Highlands dotted with sheep, shaggy surfer-dude Highland cows and heather, or Bahamian hammerheads or even Alberta’s truly big sky that I leave and return for, it’s the people, local and otherwise, I shared places with that are the most memorable.

While my address book is swollen with new entries spanning the Norwegian couple that’s still maddeningly in love with each other who tipsily insisted on picking up my Tiger tab in Vietnam to the Serbian model who campily posed with a toothless Filipino man in traditional garb and later Empire hungoverly took up dull spears against him to Roz whose dress was either plastered up on her top or tempting the locals with shoulder sex for sharing an Angkor tuk tuk for two days and cheap drinks for slightly longer to a gorgeous NYC lawyer who brazenly chided our jungle guide for the “free night trek,” I’m soberingly and achingly reminded that in addition to people worth their weight in gold and pho, there’s d-bags all over the globe.

Calgary’s car jackers, Saigon’s midnight muggers, Kratie’s sexually bold moto-taxi drivers and disgusting Filipino construction workers, divemasters, shop keepers and general disrespectful male population take away from a pleasant vacation but more importantly point at greater underlying social and societal discrepancies from the Western and “other” worlds.

In Edmonton for the month before heading north for work, I am homesick for a place that isn’t my home and dearly miss motorbikes, kitchens carried on either end of sticks, livestock big and small and dodging pushcarts and sadistic bus drivers while meandering about the city.

This too is temporary as I’ll likely be back in SE Asia for the upcoming winter, but in the mean time, I am somewhat grudgingly settled (read: most of the contents of my bag are no longer in my bag) and I have the time to reflect, enjoy and appreciate my life for the adventure it is.

Philippines photos

Asia has been serving up one surprise after another and the Philippines is no exception. Blessed with natural beauty on the salt water and terra firma front, four Canadians have been more than entertained and mesmerized. From Donsol's whale sharks to a campy Serbian model in Banaue to getting wrecked in Coron to Sabang's tatty sexpats and stunning diving to barely offshore turtles to bioluminescent plankton, our diving logbooks and camera have been full.

This trip is wrapping up and I will be back in Canada with the week. I'm ready because I have to be, but not looking forward to another farewell to my favourite travelmatey/cuz/friend.

(Whale shark in Donsol)

(Mt. Mayon near Legazpi)

(Coron)

(Coron's sunset)

(Yup, two adults in matching outfits)

(My travel mateys)

(Taal volcano)

(Natural Born Divers in Sabang. We gave them lots of pesos, they gave us lots of sweet diving.)

(Apo Island turtles)

(When four became two, this is who I scored)

(My favourite beach babe)

(This is how I feel about leaving in one week)