Wow! One Year.

I was just digging through all of the forty two thousand pictures we have taken since we left on January ninth last year, and, holy shit!

It has been one year today.

I was thinking I would dig up some highlight photos from everywhere we have been in the last year, and post them on here for a year-end best-of sort of thing, but I realized that it would be far too long.

Far, far, too long.

All of those pictures that I would have put in here are already in the blog anyway, so I am going to write instead. I will try to do this year some justice. And I will try to keep it to a reasonable length.

Like I said: I will try…

We left our home and we really didn’t know if this would all work or not (we suspected it would be fine financially, but who knew, maybe we missed something). It was hard to know going in if we could travel indefinitely without going crazy, or without getting bored, or without Tam killing me for being a grumpy old shit.

Well, we did it. We made it the first year, and we are even more excited for the second year now, knowing that we can do it, and that the finances were okay. Now we are ready to go and go and go (and this grumpy old shit is still alive).

It wasn’t without its trials.

There was this little episode with a TIA, and some wonky eyeballs, but that was resolved, and now, after the fifty-thousand dollar workup I had in both Vietnam and Thailand, I am even more confident that my health will hold out.

Those physical symptoms only lasted for an hour or so, but it was the long-term effect it had on my mental health that was far worse. The worry that it might return or that it might decide to be a full-blown stroke if it did was difficult. Just the knowledge that I was not, in fact, immortal and bulletproof was really hard to acquiesce to automatically. We were halfway around this big ol’ planet and all I could think about was that I needed to get home: home to the familiar, home to the misbelief that the US healthcare system was the best one, and home to the familiar comforting acts that we find in the predictable spaces we create for ourselves. The anxiety of being far from all these things was annoying on the best of days, and crippling on the worst. The worst part of it was that it held on like one of those leeches that gets between your toes (every time you try to pull it off it sticks to your other toes, then your fingers), but for a few months it hung on. It did get progressively better over that time, and after May or so it hasn’t really returned. I guess I have settled in. Ultimately I have understood that I would rather die facing the sky on a warm sandy beach somewhere off the map than in a hospital bed surrounded by cold concrete and artificial light.

Because of all that anxiety, we did not get to see as much of Vietnam as we would have liked. We did spend time around the rugged remote coastlines and in the bustling cities. We visited what has to be the most overcrowded, overtouristed town in all of Vietnam, and somehow it was kind of fun being lost in the anonymity of the whole thing (but only for a while). We ended up needing to leave sooner than expected. I think that Tam and I have agreed that we both really loved our time there, but we remain a bit ambivalent about returning to see the stuff we missed.

We both loved the landscapes and the sky in Laos: the caves, rivers, and limestone karsts were incomparable postcard vistas in a tapestry of green. The people were studiously friendly, but seemed a bit taken aback by tourists in general. Laos would be perfect, but it lacks one thing: There is no ocean. This is something that we seem incapable of accepting anymore, so we had to leave to find the sea again.

And then Thailand…

We have a strange relationship with Thailand. We love the people, the food, the adventure, the, well, everything really. Our first true international travel (away from our own Americas) took us there twenty years ago, and remains an unforgettable experience to this day. We have memories of three trips to the beautiful, remote, uncrowded, and friendly Thailand, but therein lies the problem: The shiny veneer of innocence has been scuffed a bit over twenty years. I see it in the people’s eyes and smiles, just a watt or two less radiant than before, and for this I feel bad. They have been steamrolled by those twenty and more years of us tourists tromping all over their homes. Thai Buddhism is still one of my favorite reflections of their particular survivor-type culture, and I do feel very at home when we travel there. This visit we saw Thailand as it is now, but we still love it, and we will return again (and again most likely).

And, besides, our new hospital system of choice resides in Bangkok and will now be our annual check-up and check-in for medical, dental, vision, and whatever comes up.

And, oh, Sri Lanka.

When we arrived, within the first hours of being here, I felt something sliding away from me to uncover some unknown and better part of me – something inexplicable and so impossible to ignore, and it has remained so to this day, eight months later. It was a feeling of coming home to a strange place that I have never been before.

I could write for hours in here about this magical island: about the green on green on green of these forests, mountains and tea plantations; about the stark beauty of the desolate north; about the fact that a two hour drive in any direction will take you to some new and unexpected microclimate; about the hilarious disorganization that is caused by the most illogical way of doing the simplest tasks; about the smiles lighting the faces of the friendliest people I have met in the world; about the plastic waste choking the land of a country that is so progressively and aggressively protecting their lands, animals, and seas; about a people oppressed by corrupt government and thirty years of civil war that still live peacefully, shoulder to shoulder with their Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Catholic neighbors; about the hopeless efforts to protect the vast numbers of wild animals that are losing their natural habitats and migration routes to agriculture, infrastructure, and progress; about the raw beauty and mystery of this ancient place, with it’s proud and ancient history; about how my interactions with a small island of remarkable people have taught me that through acceptance lies the pathway to peace.

In our year of travel there have been so many New Years celebrations.

We celebrated the arrival of 2023 in Oregon before we left, and had our first New Year celebration abroad when we celebrated Tet, the Vietnamese new year on January 22nd. Then we celebrated the Thai new year, Songkran, on April 13th, and just narrowly missed the Sri Lankan new year as well. All of them proved to be fantastic cultural experiences (and giant, days-long countrywide parties as well).

How many fresh starts can a guy have in a year anyway?

There were also challenges:

Dog bites and rabies shots, multiple bouts of viral respiratory infections, motorbike crashes with road rash and broken fingers and ribs, weird rashes, gnarly belly bugs, and ulcerating leishmaniasis skin ulcers to name a few.

And there has been the ugly things:

The mountains of plastic on land; the waves of plastic floating in the ocean; street dogs and wild donkeys in the worst imaginable shape; poverty; hunger; lack of resource; lack of food and energy; the cultural insensitivity of so many western tourists (yes, hypocritical); and the wasteful devastation of beautiful and fragile places by societies hell-bent on their own survival.

Oh, but the beautiful nature we have seen:

Rainbows over jungle walls while surfing liquid magic energy; the leathery yet diaphanous wings of tens of thousands of fruit bats blacking out the purple-blue dusk sky; the improbable limestone art forms found in ancient caves produced through millions of years of steadfast persistence; congregations of massive crocodiles warming cold reptilian blood on tropical sun-baked rock; irrepressible waves rolling through the refracted blue of clear tropical water; loving and protective families of wild elephants at leisure in their natural habitat; opulent temples created by the penniless faithful as tribute to their invisible gods; water turning to mist as it falls thousands of feet from the verdant walls of jungle mountains; leopards feeding on the recent bounty of their predatory nature; small waves caressing miles of pristine white beaches; dung beetles rolling perfectly spherical balls of animal waste to their homes within which to start a new family; and the earth unerringly pushing the vibrant green of its tenacious immutability through lands laid to waste by human process and progress.

And the people we have met:

People from cultures so different from our own perceptions of the way things are supposed to be; the steadfast survivors working far beyond the daylight hours with the clear conscience bred of hard labor performed for the support of a family; the scammers and hucksters that will accept defeat with a gracious smile; the optimists that bear their smile before their burdens; the kindhearted and generous that give to others – without thought – the last of their means; the people perpetuating a community that supports and elevates the whole beyond the frailty of the individual.

We have learned so much from these interactions, from stepping out of our home and accepting many diverse cultures as our own. The right way to live is found, not in one place or one culture, but embedded in a million little pieces in every people of every culture. I am becoming a better person for opening my eyes and accepting this one simple fact.

We have now been traveling for a year, off the edge of the map of our home, and we have found comfort, beauty, trial, and adventure out here. Most importantly we have found ourselves and each other, and found the path we choose to continue to walk through this complex and beautiful world.