Dancing between spaces; my return journey to the unpredictable south
Along one of the mountain passes in Chiang Mai
Route: Chiang Mai to Bangkok
Distance: 750km
Time: 10hours
Thoughts: Straightforward riding through the highways
After wandering around Chiang Mai for a few days, I decided I had had enough of the roaming lifestyle for a while and planned to head back towards familiarity. This stage is perhaps my favourite part of every trip. I name it “the space in between spaces”, where we are neither firmly in one spot nor the other. While uncertainty can be scary, it can also be an inviting place for discovery. And so I found myself once again, in between spaces of tantalising uncertainty, one where I feel most alive.
Having set my mind on returning home instead of heading to Laos, I packed up my luggage and got ready for my return trip. The hotel receptionist, Iaaom, looked at me in friendly expectation, wondering with curiosity if I would renew my stay for one more day. As a rule, I only ever book my accommodation one day at a time, never really knowing where the tides of life would take me, yet feeling comfortable all the same floating on the crest of its wave. It was easy to pack up and leave at a moment’s notice. While more astute people plan their lives around security and certainty, I put great stock in being able to respond with resilience. Today, I told the receptionist that I was leaving but that I had planned to return.
I arrived back in Bangkok after 10 hours of hard riding, including a fun tussle with the city’s peak hour traffic. I was pleasantly surprised at how energised I felt, having physically struggled on the way up north. Surely it was because my body had gotten used to the punishing pace of riding? Yet some part of me thinks it was also because of the warm send-off from the friendly people of Chiang Mai.
As a traveler who often relies on people’s generosity for survival, I have since come to deeply appreciate the little kindness and good wishes of people along the road. Years of such unguarded travelling develops a sensitivity in one, because each act, feeling and thought from a person can have immense impact on me as a defenceless traveller. While self-reliance and survival skills sit on one side of my see-saw, gratitude and appreciation occupy the other side.
Just as I have narrowly escaped many dangerous situations, including nearly being human trafficked, I’ve also been shown such kindness by so many people around the world—feelings, thoughts and deeds, both big and small—I keep them all in my pocket for when I need a reminder of humanity’s goodness, a light in the dark, as it often gets in this world. The sensible person would argue that my frivolity would be the cause of my death. Yet, had I not travelled with open trust in the goodness of people, I would never have been met with such deep kindness. Would I trade one for the other? Absolutely not!
I’d like to think of myself as a dancer of life, travelling in between the dark and light spaces, crying in deep sorrow sometimes and laughing in sheer joy at others, never really knowing where life would take me, but feeling ever so comfortable riding the crest of its wave all the same.
And so I live another day—arriving in Bangkok to the warm reception of my new friends—to dance in between the spaces of life once more.