Experience Travel

It was three years ago today that Julia and I set off for Thailand, to wade into Asia for the first time. It was by far the most adverturous trip we'd ever done and we didn't know what to expect and didn't what how well we'd fare. We heard good things about Thailand from numerous people and I did a considerable amount of research before going, but barely two weeks before the impending trip I stared paralysed at the snow outside and could not fathom what lay on the other side of the world. It's relatively easy to look at pictures of a place and imagine yourself being there. You can even get away with saying "I've been to a place that looks exactly like that," but pictures only tell part of the story.

When I was young I used to love peeling golf balls. Now you could never peel a good one, because that ball had to be used, but every so often you would find one sporting a huge smile and know it would be sacrificed. Of course, you had to look inside the smile and see if there was elastic first, and if there was, I could hardly wait to get home and dissect it. I would remove the white outer layer to reveal the threaded rubber mantle, seek out the best rubber band to pull, then watch it unravel. You always hoped to find the one rubber string that was key to the puzzle, then you could watch the tension of the string unwrap for you. The ball would literally come alive in your hand and peel itself down to a small rubber core with some mysterious liquid inside. The little core was virtually useless, the joy was contained getting to it.

That's travelling. When we got off the airplane, into the cab and arrived at our hotel, everything about Thailand was strange: Bangkok was like a thick shell, we didn't understand the language, the rules of the road and the symbols of modern living. Immersing ourselves in a different culture was both horrible and wonderful at the same time, nothing was comfortable but there was so much to learn.

Eventually the thick outer shell is penetrated and you start to unravel the country, the people and the culture. Life starts to make sense again, you start getting comfortable, you plug into the vibrations of day to day existence and start seeing their culture's intrinsic structure, uniqueness and beauty. The longer you stay, the more in tune you should get, but it helps being aware of your environment and everything it has to offer. That's where travel is so wonderful.

As I stated earlier, seeing a place is just one sensory experience and seeing a photograph is about one percent of your field of vision. With your eyes, everything is panoramic. But the other experience lies in your other senses, be aware of them. Take time to smell the flowers, but smell the air, smell the city, smell the restaurants, smell the ocean, smell the lake, everything is unique. Feel things (not poisonous things) and understand them through tacit contact. Listen to the noises, the bird sounds, sometimes the sound of silence is the most obvious of all. The most important sense, though, is to be aware. When you take that photograph that you think will live in infamy in your scrapbook, take the time recongize all your other senses at that moment. Every time you look at the photograph, you will remember that smell, the heat of the sun, the sound of the waves and your thoughts at that moment. The photograph will come alive.

As I stared out the window at the snow, then stared at the picture on the computer, the one thing I couldn't grasp was what it would FEEL LIKE being in Thailand. That, I can never forget.