April 29th, 2012
Well, here I am again, packing my bags. I have one more night in my apartment in downtown BKK. It's been over year since my first post, and I can still remember that morning when I woke up in Phuket, Thailand. In fact, I feel like I can remember this entire experience in such vivid detail. I came, I taught some English to wonderful Thai students, I learned some Thai, I trained some Muay Thai, I motorbiked in six different regions of the country, I met a lot of good and interesting people from all over the world, I tried a lot of new delicious food, got too many tattoos, I saw beaches and mountains, I saw different kinds of animals, I relaxed, I cooked, I canoed, I hiked, I sweat... in short, I was steeped in the intercultural shit. And yeah, a few bad things happen here and there: flooding, food poisoning, motorbike accidents, general chaos. But it's been a true reward for me to be here. My character is the stronger for it. I'm happy to be going home to see my family, and I miss them terribly when I am gone, but they also give me the strength to get up and go see the world without fear. Maybe it takes a certain kind of character to be a traveler. Perhaps I need to admit that it's not for everyone. But I wish it was. I wish everyone would travel - and in many ways, everyone does. But it's the cultural exchange I value most behind family and education. Cultural exchange is education. Travel is an opening of yourself to something new, something mysterious. And when you spend a year of your life in the thick of it, the unfamiliarity of it all disappears. You adapt. You change. You learn. I truly believe anyone can do that, just as anyone can learn a language. People fear what is different. But put yourself in the difference and see what happens. Instead of fearing, you understand. This year for me has been the most incredible crash course in Asian culture, and I will never know everything, but I can keep studying, and now it's not so foreign to me. It's a part of me. Cultures are different, but everywhere I go, people are the same. They all love and fight and fuck. As the Thais say, "Same same, but different." :)
