Final Thought

Well hello.

My trip has taken an unexpected turn. After spending a few hours at the Kuala Lampur airport, checking in for my next flight, getting my baggage through security, etc, I was watching CNN in a waiting area. They started discussing the Typhoon in the Philippines. I’ve heard of this, seen it on cnn.com, so I’m just watching and waiting for the next topic to come. All of a sudden, I hear ‘and next is China and Vietnam. They’re gonna have to brace themselves.’

WHAT.

So immediately I dart out of my chair and go to these free computers with internet and I start googling ‘track Typhoon Megi ’ ‘Typhoon megi to hit vietnam’ ‘typhoon megi nearing china’ etc etc and pretty much every link I find ends in the same way. ‘Now that the Philippines has experienced the worst of it, the storm is headed for China and Northern Vietnam.’

I couldn’t find any specific prediction of when it would find landfall, because no one’s fucking sure and this is Vietnam, but it seems pretty obvious. Sometime in the coming days, Vietnam may be screwed. So I’m like…about to have a heart attack. What should I do? Should I go to Vietnam and just fly out in case of emergency? What if EVERYONE is doing that and I can’t get a flight out? What if all flights are cancelled and I’m forced to stay in Vietnam while it braces for impact? I weigh all my options. And I had lots. I could book a flight to Seoul, which only cost $500, and just stay there until my final flight home on the 13th. Or I could book a flight right here and now to just get home for $1200. Yeah, it’s steep. But I have enough to cover emergencies like this (And not much more). Plus, I have 2 Visa credit cards.

If I do the $500 flight to Seoul, I’d still have to book 4 nights at a hotel in Seoul, plus pay for whatever touring and shit I do…even though I know NOTHING about Seoul or South Korea so I’d literally be wandering around aimlessly until I find a Lonely Planet. Or I could risk it and just fly to Vietnam and then pay whatever it takes to move my flight up and fly out ASAP. But, again, what if everyone else is doing that too? What if the Typhoon changes direction (which every single website told me it may do) and just heads straight for Hanoi, forgetting about China? And me trying to save a couple hundred bucks was the difference between getting out or being stuck for a week (I assume that changing my flight at this point would cost at least $500 – I looked up how much it would cost to change a flight last minute when I wasn’t sure leaving right away in August and it cost $500 just to change it plus the difference in fare)? And it’s not like the Hanoi airport is Kuala Lampur or Bangkok. I couldn’t just wait idly there for 24 or 36 hours like I can at these high-tech ultra-modern fucking space stations. It would probably suck. Furthermore, if I DID go to Vietnam just like it was planned, I’d be like, stressed the entire time, just praying that I’d make my flight and avoid any storm.

So I just come to the decision that the best thing to do is book the flight out from Kuala Lampur home. In many ways, it really really sucks. I was looking forward to going home and having quite a bit of extra cash on hand, but now I’m gonna be pretty tightly strapped. And sadly, I’m really not like…in the zone to go home, ya know? Like, I was planning on really thinking things out and just prepping myself for my return home over the next few days…but now, it’s like, I had 2 hours to decide I wanted to go home and then one day to deal with it. But on the other hand, I am very excited, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I cry just a little bit when I reach the O’Hare arrival hall.

OH! PS. The only reason I was made aware of this $1200 flight (which is like, way decent, right? That’s like almost what you’d expect to pay at a regular, non-last minute fare) is b/c this super nice Malaysian information desk attendant lady let me get on her computer and see what was available. It was actually really funny b/c I was like ‘Do you know of any flights to Chicago?’ and she was like ‘Not off the top of my head, but let me call someone at Malaysian Airlines…(three minutes later)…there is a flight available tomorrow morning from here to Paris to Chicago for $7000.’ Then she was like ‘You could fly to Singapore and see what they have.’ And I’m like ‘why the fuck would I just fly to Singapore? There has to be SOME flight that I can take out of here that connects somewhere in the world to Chicago.’

I almost started crying, b/c I thought I was going to be stuck in Kuala Lampur until whenever I could find a decent flight out. But then she just like, googled it and found the flight I’m currently on, haha. I have to connect in Delhi, which is hilarious. Then I’m taking a 15 hour flight directly from Delhi to Chi-town.
I have no idea how I’m gonna handle that. I’m serious. I only have 2 books and one of them is halfway done and I’m already using up some of the battery on my computer. While I am sad to not be visiting Vietnam (and I was only gonna go to the coast, which, duh, is probably the stupidest thing you could do now, so I’d be stuck in Hanoi looking at lame museums anyway), I am very, very excited to be going home.

I think the best thing about this trip is that I have experiences COUNTLESS moments of true happiness…like, moments where I just can’t help but smile the biggest smile imaginable, all to myself, and just love every second of life. It happened the first time on my first train in Germany, directly after exiting the airport, when I realized this was all actually happening. I had another one just now, realizing that I’ll be home within 1 day. It’s weird how time kind of distorts things, ya know? Like, traveling around with the Danish girls in the Balkans seems like years ago, almost, but the other day I was showering in Bali and I remembered a joke between me and Jason.

We both love and have always loved Friends, so we have various jokes from it, which are mostly just quotes. One is this random interaction between Rachel and Ross, where Ross asks Rachel ‘Oh Really?!’ and Rachel replies ‘Oh yah!!’ and I have no idea what episode it’s from or what they’re talking about, but it’s one of my and Jason’s things. Anyway I for some reason thought of it and it felt as though Jason and I were just recounting that joke, like, a week ago. Or the evening before I left where I went out to eat with Jason, Jess and Nick feels like so recently.

Anyway, if my trip was only a month, or I didn’t have things to get back to in the US, I would probably have just flown to Hanoi and then traveled away from the coast…and just stayed for as long as necessary. But I realized that being stuck in Hanoi for even one more day was literally the last thing in the world I wanted to do. Like, even if things were fine, but I couldn’t get out b/c of cancelled flights or whatever, I would have gone insane. I have been counting down the days and thinking and thinking about going home, and there was honestly no scenario that even seemed slightly appealing, except for just going home right now.

Yes, I’m still freaking out about the fact that I’m $1200 poorer, but what’s done is done. My number one philosophy in travel, and the first thing I tell friends when they go backpacking, is that you CANNOT stress about money. You will lose money, you will be scammed, you will spend more than you wanted, but you can’t stress about it or it will ruin everything. Obviously in this case, it’s kind of ridiculous, but right now I’m just focusing on the good. And thank god I was watching CNN.

WHAT THE HELL WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF I HADNT BEEN SITTING ON THAT COUCH?! I’d be all la dee da I’m in Vietnam ooh this is pretty why is my beach tour cancelled? The what’s coming? HOLY SHIT. And then I would have cried…something which still hasn’t happened on this trip…(knock on wood). And thank god this happened at the end of my trip. What if like, I was about to go to India and they were like ‘Ummm people shouldn’t go there, because there’s a huge Pakistani nuclear bomb about to explode over the entire country…sorry…’ or something crazy like that? If I hadn’t had the fact that after just a couple of flights, I’d be home and done with all of it, I think the whole thing would have been much harder.

In 24 hours I can get a big gulp at Kum n Go!

But yeah, I guess this may just be the end of my travel blog. I have very much enjoyed sharing my experiences with you all, and I can’t believe anyone would ever want to read about them (oooh he went to another museum? Cool!), but thank you so much for caring and having an interest. I hope that you guys have perhaps become inspired to travel, if not already. Now that I’m broke, who knows when I’ll get to travel again, but I really hope that in the near future I can make it back to Europe to finally see the UK or Scandinavia. Those are definitely priorities. Perhaps in a couple of years, I’ll have another blog, and I’ll call it ‘Experienced Traveller’ or ‘World Conquerer.’

Those are both terrible aren’t they? Something stupid like that.
PPS do you think this is totally what I get for always saying ‘Nothing has gone wrong on this trip! Everything has gone exactly the way it’s supposed to!’ over and over again? I kind of do. But, I doubt that God/fate/Buddha/whoever would punish an entire peninsula just b/c I didn’t knock on wood.

OH MY GOD I FORGOT TO TELL YOU THE BEST PART. This is so stupid and hilarious, and I feel like it completely exemplifies this trip and my life. So, like I said, I was already checked in and past immigration and everything before I realized that I wasn’t going to Hanoi. So when I was like ‘ok, no.’ I had to go BACK through immigration to cancel my flight. They’re like ‘what are you doing?’ and then I had to get my bag, which was on the OTHER side of immigration. Then I had to go about again and check in for my new flight and AGAIN go through immigration. I have SO many stamps from Malaysia, you wouldn’t believe. Thank GOD that US citizens don’t need a visa in Malaysia, or I would have been screwed.

They seriously thought I was just a fucking idiot though. I’m not even kidding, it was so funny. This one guy was like ‘umm…’ and then just started laughing and he called his friend over to tell him the story. I don’t blame him. I would have done the same.

If once at home, I realize there is more to share, I may make another update. If not though, I will be seeing you all very soon :)

Love,
- Josh A