In the lead up to this grand adventure that I’m now a part of, during the long months in which my friends had to endure my endless talk of Thailand, one specific friend made me promise her that I would keep a travel blog while I was gone. A travel blog I thought, what on earth would I write in a blog? I’ve never even kept a journal! Well soon enough I would find out a lesson about traveling both painful and beautiful; every day you are living in or traveling through a foreign country, you WILL have something to write about. Every step here is a step into the unknown and whether you end up on a beautiful beach paradise, on a jungle path through the mountains, or in a dingy hotel room with bed bugs… it is still a step towards a greater understanding of the world.
By the time I landed in Krabi I had been traveling for close to 30 hours, stop and go, and had barely slept a wink. I had cycled through more emotions than I knew existed; sadness in the airport as I looked through the cards; letters, and pictures from the beautiful people I was leaving behind; complete awe of the earth’s beauty as I looked down on frozen Alaskan tundra from my tiny window in the sky; pride as I wrote down my goals and ambitions; fear of the unknown as I made my decent into Krabi and finally an overwhelming sense of doubt in myself and my decisions as my day came to a close, a feeling of emotional distress that I hope never again to feel in my life. This feeling overtook me as I laid on my back under the leaking roof of a cramped, dingy hotel room that I inevitably overpaid for, on a mattress as stiff as my body felt. The thoughts of bed bugs, mold, and a general unhappiness is what forced me back out and it was this instinct that began to change my fortunes. I realized that the reason for my unhappiness and my doubts was that I was looking at this city through the eyes of someone about to move in. Within that mindset I was lonely, lost, overwhelmed and I must say, fairly disappointed in my decisions, for while the surroundings were stunning, Krabi just didn't seem livable to me; but when I shifted my viewpoint to that of a stranger traveling through a new land everything changed. My loneliness morphed into a curiosity about all the new people around me, and the sense of being overwhelmed transitioned into an excitement of the unknown. Some good thai food, an amazing mai tai, and several beers at the local Irish bar later and I was happy man. Lying in bed the next morning I thought about where I was and what I wanted from my trip; it was right then that I made a decision that has completely changed the direction of my plans... I was going to Phuket, but first, it was time to eat!
-Tommy
“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.” -Emerson
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