A Reflection on a Year in Asia

I started my trip in South Korea with a brand new Osprey backpack. It was so immaculate that, in the beginning, as it became worn and stained I knew the cause of each spot and where and how it happened. I would sit in long, uncomfortable bus rides inspecting my pack for new blemishes so that I could remember them by the circumstances and place. Ultimately, these spots, stains, and fraying edges on my pack told a story of where it'd been, and by association, where I'd been.

But today, nearly one year to the day when I woke up in my sister's Boston apartment at four in the morning to catch a taxi, operated by a Hungarian immigrant, for a 6:30am departure bound for Seoul, South Korea, there is so much wear and tear on my pack, all the stories have become one bigger, less detailed story. And the detailed stories I remember are muddled and sometimes reinvented out of a desperation to believe I haven't forgotten. So now when I look over my backpack, I no longer see a chronology of where I've been in Asia and what I've done, but just a dingy backpack.

Bodies tell stories in a similar way. A scar on the back of each of my hands reminds me of a family vacation, along with my friend Chad and my sister's friend Kristin, in Conway, NH. Chad and I drove there separately in my maroon 1987 5-cylinder Audi 5000S -- gifted to me by my father around my 16th birthday -- while playing a mix tape Chad made of the most excellent retro hits of the 1980s. Songs like Wall of Voodoo's Mexican Radio, Duran Duran's Hungry Like a Wolf, Simple Minds' Don't You (Forget About Me), Dead or Alive's You Spin Me Round (Like a Record), Gary Numan's Cars, Dexys Midnight Runners' Come On Eileen, English Beat's Mirror in the Bathroom, and no 80s mix is complete without A-Ha's Take on Me. As a relatively new driver I experienced my first can't-see-shit-out-the-window we're-all-gonna-die downpour, as I started hydroplaning towards the cement median before regaining control. But the scars on the back of my hands came during a swimming contest as I attempted to complete the most laps underwater in one breath. Without goggles, and too chicken to ever open my eyes underwater, I blindly went too deep and scrapped my hands along the gritty bottom of the pool, unfolding two fingernail sized chunks of open skin. For the next several months the wounds didn't heal because that summer I worked in the "Lobster Pool" at Little Jack's Seafood Restaurant, where the constant use of latex gloves filled with water or perspiration, and caused the supple scabs to keep peeling off. Now the scars are relics of a really good summer vacation where I was young, innocent, and life was simpler, so it seemed.

There used to be a time when I could recount with a story nearly all the noticable scars on my body (or at least I imagined I could). But that's not the case these days. The raised scar on my right wrist is hard to find and story-less; the method I received the cut under my chin where hair doesn't grow has been forgotten -- but I believe it was from a jumping-on-the-bed miscalculation where my chin landed on the foot board. There are many more that are a mystery to me. Of the youngest memories I have as a child, I sometimes think they were invented from stories I've heard from my parents, or photos I've seen in albums. So my mental faculties are waning or filling up with more important stuff, the small events that make up the big events are being forgotten, and some of the memories I have are second hand. I'm starting to worry that I'm going the way of my backpack. That's life, I guess.

This year I earned a scar on the top of my left foot after unknowingly scratching it against a rusty step while returning to the junk boat I had just jumped off of in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. (Thankfully, I had a tetanus shot a few months prior). Coincidentally, another traveler unknowingly fell victim to the vicious step, and back on board someone followed the trails of blood to notify the owners. But only wearing sandals throughout Southeast Asia meant the scar has become sunburned on many occasions, leaving it pink and uncomfortable and taking longer to heal. So what should have been a forgettable cut now is a white dot of scar tissue on my foot for a lifetime, and one day I might not remember how it got there.

I could summarize my trip in Asia in a lot of ways, telling different stories with various themes or trains of consciousness. I don't believe that the stories of my scars are that interesting to you, dear reader, but it is an interesting way to think of our bodies, and its an idea I like. We are adorned with memories both physical and mental that are encrypted from the stranger or from the friend that wasn't there. Maybe if we were privy to the code, we could read each other like books, these journeys through life, and understand each other better than we often times express through language.

But we ain't books, so that's not possible. I don't think we can know each other much more than our shared experiences and a collective consciousness about existence. Stories are one of the ways we share experiences, and here I am trying to tell you a story about my year in Asia, but finding that making a list of superlatives is contentious and thinking its been done before by anyone with a travel blog; the most absurd and funny things of interest seem too outrageous for a semi-public blog; my memories with friends and friendly faces (it isn't called facebook for nothing) seem in infinite supply yet all blurred together in the recesses of my mind; finding a profound "conclusion" is especially contentious and perhaps there isn't one there; and if I tried to narrate a story where I let the reader live vicariously through my experience to see what I've done and how it changed me, if at all -- well, its way too complex, and uninteresting to anyone but me.

Very early in my trip, I was given some kernel of travel knowledge by an amazing Nunavutian world traveler while on Jeju Island, South Korea. Her advice, more like a warning, was about returning home, as she was finishing up a half year traveling solo through the "Stans" of Asia, minus Afghanistan and Pakistan. She said that wherever I go next after traveling, home or elsewhere, there will be few people, if any, that care much about my previous travel experiences. She related going home after traveling as if it was all a series of newly developed pictures: after an initial brief review by friends and family, these pictures soon get put into a box and packed away. They are only occasionally brought out to reminisce with the people who were there in the picture with you. I remember thinking at the time, "How will it feel to travel for a year, 1/29 of my life, and after only a week, feel that no one cares about it?" I guess that is human nature: we live in the present or for the future, while our stories of the past make us who we are in the present -- without having to explain how or why we came to be. In that sense, there's no story to tell.

So I leave Asia without a nice and neat blog post summarizing my trip in Asia, though the blog will continue from Australia if the stories are interesting enough to share. But remember that our stories are implicit in who we are, and when I meet you next, you are indirectly experiencing those stories. For those many great people who were here to share it, I hope I cross paths with you again so that I can reminisce about the stories that aren't interesting to those that weren't there. And regardless of who you are, I'd be glad to listen to your stories, and share my own over a wine at a sunset, a soju over a game of cards, a beer at a bar, or a shot of vodka on a train. I think we'll both like that better than writing or reading a blog.