Becoming an alien #traveling
"How about China? Have you seen the great wall?"
"All walls are great as the roof doesn't fall" says Bjork in her Selma Songs.
It might be true. So is it still necessary to travel to China and see the great wall? No. Not to see the great wall.
But it is still necessary to travel and meet people.
I learned a lot from traveling like never before.
When you're lecturing people for a living, it's normal to be confident about your intelligence. But somehow you get too carried away. You stop learning. You feel that you're smart enough.
Traveling is the remedy.
You travel. Alone. Not to see the landmarks, but to test on your surviving skills. If you're really that smart, can you really survive? Out there people are different. The culture is different. The language is different, and sometimes English is just not enough. Your 600 TOEFL score is useless. Your 3-point-something GPA is useless. What important is your adapting skills.
Out there. Alone. I was an alien. I was alienated. No one speaks my language, and the locals don't speak any English. I experienced this when I was stranded in Vieng Xai, Laos, a town near Vietnam border crossing. Very little (almost no) tourist infrastructure. And the transport! Oh! Easy to get there, but there was no bus to take me and my new travel mate back to the main town we're staying. No one speak English and my broken Lao phrases I picked up weren't helping. No bus. No taxi. No cyclo. No motorbike taxi. Nothing! Worse: no one want our money. Back home, money can buy you (almost) everything. A 38km ride is one thing that is supposedly easy to buy.
We waited and waited and waited. Hour after hour. After 4 hours we decided to just fuck it and walk the long 38km winding road, up and down the hills, back to Sam Neua, the main town.
We learned to adapt and survive - helping ourselves when no one would like to help us.
We walked walked and walked. I'm not really strong, but I learned to be. The road was almost empty. There were only 2-3 vehicles in every 30 minutes. Finally, a truck came along. And we hitchhike.
We survived.
No, it wasn't because you're damn smart, or Uni grad, or speak 7 languages. Whatever. Sometimes it's just because you let yourself go with the flow. The universe will do the rest, one very important lesson I learned from the laid-back Laotians.
When you're an alien, you know nothing. And you'll learn to see the world differently. Life is never the same, and it's not like what you think it is. Your rules don't apply. Like a baby, adapt, go with the flow, or you'll suffer.
So, yes. Someday I'll go to China. Not for the great wall, not for the scenic beauty, but for the people. There's always something you can learn from the locals when you travel abroad. One day, my destination would be the moon... Be a complete alien, then watch and learn.
"All walls are great as the roof doesn't fall" says Bjork in her Selma Songs.
It might be true. So is it still necessary to travel to China and see the great wall? No. Not to see the great wall.
But it is still necessary to travel and meet people.
I learned a lot from traveling like never before.
When you're lecturing people for a living, it's normal to be confident about your intelligence. But somehow you get too carried away. You stop learning. You feel that you're smart enough.
Traveling is the remedy.
You travel. Alone. Not to see the landmarks, but to test on your surviving skills. If you're really that smart, can you really survive? Out there people are different. The culture is different. The language is different, and sometimes English is just not enough. Your 600 TOEFL score is useless. Your 3-point-something GPA is useless. What important is your adapting skills.
Out there. Alone. I was an alien. I was alienated. No one speaks my language, and the locals don't speak any English. I experienced this when I was stranded in Vieng Xai, Laos, a town near Vietnam border crossing. Very little (almost no) tourist infrastructure. And the transport! Oh! Easy to get there, but there was no bus to take me and my new travel mate back to the main town we're staying. No one speak English and my broken Lao phrases I picked up weren't helping. No bus. No taxi. No cyclo. No motorbike taxi. Nothing! Worse: no one want our money. Back home, money can buy you (almost) everything. A 38km ride is one thing that is supposedly easy to buy.
We waited and waited and waited. Hour after hour. After 4 hours we decided to just fuck it and walk the long 38km winding road, up and down the hills, back to Sam Neua, the main town.
We learned to adapt and survive - helping ourselves when no one would like to help us.
We walked walked and walked. I'm not really strong, but I learned to be. The road was almost empty. There were only 2-3 vehicles in every 30 minutes. Finally, a truck came along. And we hitchhike.
We survived.
No, it wasn't because you're damn smart, or Uni grad, or speak 7 languages. Whatever. Sometimes it's just because you let yourself go with the flow. The universe will do the rest, one very important lesson I learned from the laid-back Laotians.
When you're an alien, you know nothing. And you'll learn to see the world differently. Life is never the same, and it's not like what you think it is. Your rules don't apply. Like a baby, adapt, go with the flow, or you'll suffer.
So, yes. Someday I'll go to China. Not for the great wall, not for the scenic beauty, but for the people. There's always something you can learn from the locals when you travel abroad. One day, my destination would be the moon... Be a complete alien, then watch and learn.
posted by oengoemeloeloe at 11:14 AM
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