traveling alone

battambang, cambodia

is your wife or girlfriend at the hotel? no. you're here with friends? um, no. so, you are just traveling around for three months through asia by yourself? that's right. isn't that a bit...

yes, it is. it is weird, strange, lonely, exhilarating, and any one of a number of adjectives that cover the gamut of feelings and emotions. from the outside, it must seem bizarre. from the first person, it is no less so.

traveling alone is like eating dinner alone compounded by three months (or however long one might be on the road.) most of the time, this is no different than eating at the counter of the burrito chain after a long day of work or stopping by the thai place for takeout. sometimes, it can feel like going to a michelin star restaurant in soho and sitting at an elevated table in the middle of the dining room. the wait staff awkwardly removes the second plate from the table cloth. other diners leer and whisper not-so-furtively. the casual laughter from happy tables can sound like thunder.

but it must be so, at least for me. as circumstances would have it, i am a thirty-one year old, single male. i have a wonderful family and a rich tapestry of friends who make me feel the way that anyone would ever wish to feel. i've been planning this trip for about nine months and threw out a few invitations here and there to various persons of interest. i have one dear friend joining me in a month, but nobody else could take time away from their responsibilities to get some dust on their feet. and that's understandable. and okay. truth be told, i figured that i would be doing the trip alone from the moment i decided to go.

because it's not as if i am alone. it is intimidating in a heavily-trafficked place like siem reap to be by oneself in a sea of families and happy and not-so-happy couples. but the solo travelers seem to find each other, or else we're able to tag on as welcome third or fifth wheels for a spell. and if our company grows grumpy, lame, or annoying, we can always make up some half-hearted excuse to rejoin the wind and keep it moving.

still, the real justification for flying solo is the least substantiated, at least for me. because i'm looking out, rather than at someone across the table; because i can linger a little bit longer after grabbing that coffee or beer; because i have all of my attention on the strange new world around me, i'm able to take more in. and it's not just a simple calculus of quantity and quality of perception, either. things just kinda happen to me. policemen who had been seemingly stoic start joking with me. waiters and waitresses sit at my table for a breather. tuk tuk drivers go a little bit further out of their way to point something out that they could have just mentioned.

i don't have any definitive explanation for this; it's possible that it's universal and that others just don't really notice. i suppose the reason i make such a big deal of it is that it is such a big deal. to me. i really can't live without these moments of (bang a gong for each sappy cliche) cross-cultural bridging (bong!) and sixth-sensual stimulation (bong!) and interpersonal awareness of the here now us (bong! bong! bong!) so, the truth is that i travel because i have to. and if that means going alone, that's how it will be.

but like i said, it would certainly be preferable to have company. it would be so great to walk back to my hotel and have her standing there in the lobby. her hair would smell of dr. bronner's and her tank top would be stained from the fish oil she spilled two days ago. we will stare into each other with sun-kissed cheeks and love-drenched eyes and speak softly about our favorite train rides and shadiest border crossings. we will go dance beneath the starlight and spend the night whispering khmer swear words to one another beneath a mosquito net. and in the morning we will be wordless. we will sip our nescafe and eat our oily omelets before having a tuk tuk driver take us to some new, enchanting paradise where we will argue with him upon arrival over twenty-five cents.

or maybe not. perhaps that's just not in the cards for me. and if i have to always travel alone, then alone it shall be. and in which case i shall bequeath my legacy to my passport and my ashes to the sea, and just keep roamin' round this great goddamn world til there ain't nothin more to see.