This space will be used to document and record my adventures in Vietnam and throughout South East Asia over the course of the next year.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Farewell Asia

Almost two years have passed and I have seen, experienced and lived more than I could ever have imagined was possible. I left New York on a whim, interested in breathing in Asia, seeing the world from a different angle and giving myself an education that University could never have given me. I told my friends I'd be gone for six months to a year at most. Never would I have allowed myself to believe that it would be June 2006 when I returned to a city that invigorates me and one that I do call home.

What have I been doing for the last two years? The answer would take days but I'll summarize it for the impatient reader. I flung myself to a bustling, crazy city half-way around the world where I knew no-one and I made it home. Ho Chi Minh City bowled me over, made me question everything I've ever known as a "normal" way of life. I sat on chairs made for infants, navigated streets brimming with motorbikes, learned to ride one, had four accidents, enrolled in a teacher training course, worked ten hour days trying to prepare myself for the hardcore work faced by teachers throughout the globe, honed my English skills in order to teach them, refined my body language and acting skills while trying to communicate with my countrymen, traveled through an incredible country filled with enthusiastic, delightful, forgiving, hardworking Vietnamese citizens, made friends, missed my life in the West, grew accustomed to the dogs and cats and reptiles and rats being eaten around me and finally boarded a bus with my love and traveling companion and did a 5-month, 9-country tour of Asia.

Nothing I had read or heard of could have prepared me for the myriad of colors, scents, tastes, smells, sensations that the Asian countryside had to offer. From the temples of Angkor Wat to the beaches of Bali, we made our way in over 15 forms of transportation, stayed in 46 hotels, read over 20 books, spoke to hundreds, possibly thousands of unique, fascinating people of different classes, races, tribes and countries.

I walk away from Asia knowing what it's like to ride a motorbike, order vegetarian food in a foreign language, bargain for a hotel room, ascend mountain passes with a broken motorbike and a burnt hole in my leg, sleep in a hammock, laugh without understanding the joke, try all kinds of food.

But the lesson that I think is the most important, the most real, the most essential to my role in this world is that I learnt never to judge, always to listen, to always imagine what this person actually means, where they learnt their set of beliefs, why things are the way they are. If you breathe in the air of Northern Vietnam, eat the food of mountainous Java, swim in the ocean of East Coast Malaysia, see the poverty in rural Cambodia or walk the hills of rural Laos, the world ceases to be so large, you can understand it, believe in it and know that we all exist side by side in a tiny globe and the best we can do is respect eachother.

Farewell Asia, I will see you again soon. Your earth is in my blood and I will return. Until then, I leave you a kiss...

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dear Alison, i just recently visited saigon and i loved it. i have been considering teaching english there as a way to get back and stay for some time. can you please email me at Dave@monroenews.com and let me know what program or company you went through to do what you did??

thank you, dave arnold

2:23 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi,

I need the same help as Dave. Any help navigating on how to get a job teaching English in HCMC would be helpful. Thanks

Tim in England

tim@twright.co.uk

10:54 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed reading your blog

8:54 AM

 
Blogger Xavier Vidal said...

Hello, Alison. My name is Xavier Vidal and I'm a blogger and journalist from Barcelona, Spain. I'm working now in several projects, one of them is a TV show called Dutifri (www.dutifri.telecinco.es), played on spanish Tele 5 tv. We travel around the world searching Spanish people and curiosities on every country. By now, I'm working on searching information about Vietnam and the people living in the country, things that don't use to be in travel guides. In this research, I reached your blog and and found it very interesting and amazing. Well, I wonder if you can help me to find some other amazing and curious information about Vietham, country lifestyle and people for giving spanish audience a new and interesting dimension about Vietam. If you know some facts in this way and you have enough time to sent me by mail, I'll be very pleased about it. If not, thanx for all. I hope you don't be embarrassed for my mail. It so, just delete it and excuse me. One of the things we are collecting is the price os differnts things in the different countries we travel to. If you want and you have time to, I would send you my list just to know the prices in Vietnam. Waiting for your your answer, thanx for all and regards from Barcelona!
(my mail, xaviervidal@gmail.com)

6:57 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

have a good time

6:38 AM

 
Anonymous Ezy-bid said...

Wow, really helpful, this is very inspirational. Thank you for your superb post.

7:34 AM

 

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