The second item on the agenda focused on the remainder of our trip. In Bangkok, we sent back all of our forwarding air tickets so that we’d be truly free to do as we please. The upside is that we can decide where to go whenever we want to. The downside is that it eliminates an overall plan or structure and removes any need for action. We can just linger in one place tied down by inertia. I think this has added a bit of tension, because we constantly have to figure out where to go and how to get there.
Then there are our differing objectives for the rest of the trip. Malcolm favors cities with historical architecture and shopping venues while I prefer hiking around mountains and jungles and staying in funky village huts. Malcolm says he’s “tired of driving on roads with potholes, seeing the same shacks, and eating bad food,” and is ready to get back to the First World; I, on the other hand, am blissfully content wandering around the Third World. I’ve never traveled outside of Europe until now, and it’s still so new to me. So what do we do? Originally I thought about splitting up and meeting Malcolm in Australia while I wend my way through Indonesia. But we decided on a compromise. I’ll have to move out of the Third World faster than I’d like to, and Malcolm will have to stay in it for a bit longer than he cares to.
So while it’s easy to portray us as the Dick Van Dyke family (I truly like the role of Laura Petrie) we still have to wrestle with the same issues as everyone at home. I guess the answer to the question in the e-mail is that we’re probably managing our lives no better and no worse than anyone else.
