3 Ginger Snaps

According to my quick calculations we are travelling for 156 days and we are presently on day 49 making this approximately the one-third mark of our trip. It is a milestone that is both difficult and easy to believe. On one hand, look at all we have done in the time since we left Canada:

• Ancient temples
• Epic boat rides
• SEVA eye camp
• Snorkelling on the beach
• Cooking classes
• Meeting the elephants
• 2 royal palaces

Without getting into the specifics, the summary notes version of the list is amazing. We are An incredibly fortunate family. 

On the other hand, when we first started contemplating this adventure it felt as though six months was an incredibly long time to be away and, while the end is not yet site, the adult in me knows that it is just around the corner. How did so much time pass so quickly?

On Tuesday I will be visiting an International school in Ha Noi, Vietnam because I know that eventually this adventure too come to an end, just like every other adventure, and gainful employment will once again be required. 

And so I feel contemplative and find myself wondering why am I here? Truth be told, when we first set out on this journey I do not think that we had any particular goal in mind for ourselves or our family other than the fact that we wanted to be open minded about any opportunities or experiences that might come our way.

And now we are into the journey. The early days that came with the thrill of airplane rides and passport stamps are behind us and now we are living the reality of experience. Every day life out here has now become just every day life. I do not mean to suggest for a moment that the novelty of travel has worn away. To be certain there is still so much for us to see and so much for us to get excited about. Take the night bus for example… getting on the bus , with its crazy lighting at bunkbeds, was a thrill. The ensuing 17 hours of travel was not.

I digress. My point is that we have been travelling now for long enough to have established a new set of routines. A new normal so to speak. And, like any set of routines, I think it is worth taking a moment to consider whether or not our new routines have the potential to lull us into a sense of complacency about the remarkable privilege that is our journey. 

And so I return to my question: what does it mean to travel?

All the cliches are true: new places, new people, new foods, new art, new forms of transportation, new world views, new gods… but the thing that happened today that really got me think about the meaning of travel was this:

We were out in Cat Ba Town with no particular agenda. Having just visited the market and oggled the fresh seafood and the fresh meat we walked along the river bank and found a steep set of steps leading down to the water and that seemed like a good place to pause and decide where things were going to go next. As it happened, the steps had large pieces of green beer bottle glass all over them and it was no surprise that Ruby decided they were beautiful, picked them up and started playing with them. Normally we wouldn’t let our kids play with broken glass – but this is the new normal not the old normal. So we did. And she was careful with it and instructed her little sister to be careful with it too and they had a perfectly pleasant time playing with broken glass. And that was when it occurred to me that one of the things that it means to travel is to have the gift of time. Time to decide in a non-hyper-reactive way what is going to happen next. And that is something I just don’t remember feeling as much of before we started out on this journey. 

Here is one more great picture of ruby taking some time. Cat Ba Town is built into the side of several large limestone outcropping known as karst formations and this was a fascinating demolition site into the side of one karst formation that we checked out for a few minutes.