Tag Archives: the meaning of travel

Version 0.56 (What Does it Mean to Have “Seen” a Place?)

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04/22/19

Fresh crisis today? I don’t know.

That’s not exactly how I wanted to start this journal—so dramatically—though it was bound to be on something about feeling a bit lost, a bit without purpose (how many times have I written about purpose now?).

What the fuck am I doing in Bangkok? Honest to God I truly don’t want to be here. Maybe I really need to embrace some of the more touristic things, and head into the older part of the city and the areas near the river? Maybe I’ll be more inspired and motivated to photograph there? The heat makes any time spent outside miserable, though. It doesn’t help that in some sense I feel that what I am doing is a waste of time, that my photography is not appreciated, will never be appreciated, is unimportant, doesn’t matter (though why should it?). I have been feeling like an absolute trash photographer lately. The lowest of the low. I am a coward, too scared to face someone on the street and take his/her picture (not that that is a new feeling, but the intensity of it is). I feel like the dumb, white tourist offending the “exotic” locals by photographing them; every glance in my direction is discouragement. Maybe I just need a change of scenery in the city. Maybe I just need a change of head-space, a change of head, a change of brains. a change of self perception. Having moved hostel locations should help with that. The biggest problem here, though, is purpose, as I wrote in my third sentence. I have no purpose. The purpose of the whole trip is travel, and I’m not doing much of that. I take some sort of vehicular transport from spot to spot, mosey around the place, then move on. Can I really say that I’ve visited Thailand when I haven’t left the city of Bangkok? What does it mean to “see” a place, anyway? How much of a city or country does one have to explore to qualify as a person who may say he has seen it?

I’m writing all this in a smallish hall within which numerous food vendors are set up by the Thong Lo BTS stop. I’m at a bright, canary yellow table, sitting on a metal stool. All around me is a rush of people swooshing to and fro: vendors running out food and drinks, and visitors looking for an empty or near-empty table, or searching for a food stall that looks appealing. It’s all metal and plastic stools here, as it seemingly is at all street food stalls throughout Asia; and colorfully painted square metal tables; and white tile floor, definitely not right now very white. The aroma of food cooked or cooking or raw suffuses the space, and all those smells and aromas mingle together into one homogeneous scent of food unless someone walks by with a plate of something, which has a tendency to waft up right beneath one’s nose as it is brought past. Right now I smell cucumber or papaya, and some sort of meat sizzling on a grill, and I hear distinctly something crackling in a wok, mingling with the voices of those behind the counter. Mostly the space is a rumble of conversation pierced periodically by a passing scooter, the gait of a woman walking in heels, the bright high voice of a child, the tinking of silverware, the stacking of plastic plates and bowls, the low almost imperceptible rumble of a bus (or is that the sky train?) Fans and iced drinks are the only means of keeping cool in here, though occasionally there is a draft from outside that blows pleasantly into the complex. A couple sits at a table and laughs out loud together. He has just arrived, and brought her something, but their relationship I don’t think is what that statement might immediately cause one to think, and she walks out from behind a stall to chit-chat at a table and look through what he has brought. I like this place. It is for all peoples: westerner, easterner, and Thai alike. It’s not for the rich, it’s not for the poor. It’s for anyone who comes hungry, no matter what his or her place on the rungs of the social ladder.

Version 0.30 (What it Means to not Travel)

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01-30-19

I’m on a bus from Perth to Albany. Six hours with not a thing to eat. That’s not nearly as bad as it sounds, but if Jay, a bloke I met and chatted with a bit yesterday and who gave me the idea of going to Vietnam instead of Bali, had not chewed my ear off this morning I would have had the opportunity to grab a snack. Oh well. Maybe it’s for the best. If ‘Nam is as good as he says it is I’ll thank him regardless. I’m just glad I made the bus, even if I am sweaty and sticky as a result of speed-walking and jogging with my hiking pack to get to the station before the bus departed.

I plan on doing a walking tour from Albany, kinda following the coastline west. Might take busses or hitch a ride here and there. This is very loosely planned. There are a few specific “sites” I wish to visit along the way. I put sites in quotations because it’s all a site as far as I’m concerned, but these are things labeled on a map, so i guess that makes them of some greater significance.

I do have a decision to make re: Vietnam, and that is what city I will choose to stay. Then will need to find an apartment, and apply for a visa.

Peering out the window of the bus everything looks the same; but looks different too. It’s like a mashup of eastern Nebraska, American southwest, and Mid-Atlantic landscapes, but the plant species are different. It’s all forested and hilly, but extremely dry and rocky. At least this is how it appears to me. This is the world over of course: same but different, different but same. It’s what makes travel so stimulating sensorially and mentally, and so exciting. The sameness gives one a sense of security, even if only slight. It’s a center, a nexus, a pivot which all that is different swings from. It’s a bastion which one can repair to when one feels threatened or is frightened by that which is different and foreign. Deep down we all know we are the same—all the same dreams and desires, the same suffering, the same joy. And if one bothers to zoom out, and I mean really zoom out, even all the differences we observe on this micro level of cities, states, countries, cultures blur into one humanity speeding and spinning and revolving around one star, on a tiny blue, green and white sphere, one which seems to be slowly going black, like a bit of cheese slowly molding in the back of your refrigerator. The differences we notice so close up are things that make travel so exciting and exhilarating (and frightening, perhaps): the different cultures, the different animal and plant species, different money, different languages, different customs. No one travels for the sameness of travel, but “the same” is the thing that one can latch onto if necessary (if one can see it—that is, he doesn’t miss the forest for the trees).

Of course realizing all this can beg the question why travel at all if at heart, or from a perspective really zoomed out, there is no difference between one place and the next. And what about those people without the wherewithal to travel? Where comes their excitement? Well obviously life is flux, change. Sit somewhere that is not the interior of a windowless room (this is why people go mad in the madhouse) and every five minutes, every five seconds something is changing if one cares to take notice, to focus her attention. Day to day always brings the new. This change, this difference, this excitement, this joy can be found anywhere, even sitting in a chair. So, why travel if that which can be got by traveling can be got by sitting on the porch at home, or in a cafe? But why not travel for the exact same reasons? Ultimately, you see, it doesn’t matter what you do—travel, or not travel—because to travel is to not travel, and to not travel is to travel.