What Does Traveling Backwards Feel Like?
July 31, 2018 by admin
Traveling Backwards and Forwards, simultaneously, feels just the same….only stranger! Exactly the same way that traveling Upwards or Downwards does. I have just completed all four of these directions and am quite disoriented by now.
If you have kept up with my travels, you will know that I have been steadily moving eastwards around the equator for almost three years; in this third RTW of mine: Traveling from The States and Mexico, Central America; to the UK, Eastern Europe, Russia, Italy, France, Spain, the Canaries, Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Indonesia, Thailand, and Laos.
Now, that’s a standard, uni-directional, logical plowline! Aside from going north in Thailand and then south along Laos to its capital of Vietiane, I have stayed as predictable as the crow flies.
But, this little crow’s brain is apparently very easy to scramble. All it took was a three-month detour to the Philippine Islands. On impulse, I took an abrupt turn across the South China Sea to Manila, and then traveled north and south (up and down) through Cebu City, Oslob, Siguihor Island and Dumaguete, where I broke a shoulder, twisted a knee, and seriously disoriented myself concerning my straightforwards around-the-world flight.
I am just realizing the effect of this whimsical dosey-do, between Manila, in the Philippine Islands, and Vientiane, Laos; because I have returned to the very same Mixay Paradise Hotel I set out from last April. Same staff, same room, same afternoon tea, same Buddhist temples across the street! Naturally, I have been reabsorbed into the same loving hotel family…even some of the same guests! It suddenly feels as if I haven’t been anywhere. As if May, June and July never occurred! As if the world has, suddenly, simply plopped into the monsoon season.
As soon as I have sufficiently rested, I shall rejoin my Stray Asia hop-on, hop-off tour through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Then, when I use up these SE Asian countries, I am planning more circles through China, Siberia, Korea, and Japan. How confusing will those be as I teeter on the far-eastern shores of that greatest landmass?
Circles are all that I will have left to perform! The Islands of The Pacific Ocean! I shall be one dizzy balleting blonde, that’s for sure, when I finally attain the western shoreline of my homeland. Will I then collapse like a victorious, long-distance swimmer? Determined to stay closer to home in the future?
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