Travelfish #388: So now, I guess, is the time to explore it
No need to go outside!
Hi everyone,
Squeaking in late of a Monday night! The pics this week are all from Laos: The Gibbon Experience and the slow boat trip. Enjoy!
The past week on Couchfish is all about Laos. Popular posts included the two part series on the Gibbon Experience and then another two part series on the slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang. The free to read pieces included a piece from years ago on hitching northern Vietnam and the diversion was somewhere to truly lose time.
The Gibbon Experience does not disappoint when it comes to views. Photo: Adam Poskitt.
Over on Thai Islands Times, David has an epic piece on making sense of all the Thai islands—enjoy!
This week the lack of travel has been getting to me and in this week’s feature I talk about just how much travelling you can find in a room where you live—no need to put a mask on and step outside.
Cheers and thanks for your support
Stuart
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So now, I guess, is the time to explore it.
If you’re anything like me, the last three months have felt like three years. Or was it thirty?
The clock slows down. Every day feels like Sunday (not in a good way). Your Instagram feed has slowly metamorphosed from a collection of idyllic beach shots to who has the worst formed sourdough. Facebook is either the planet losing its collective mind, or a stream of “favourite photos from, when we could, you know, travel.”
Like ships in the night. On the Mekong River, Laos. Photo: Stuart McDonald.
The other day, on Couchfish, I was writing a piece on a trip I did a quarter of a century ago in Vietnam. In the process, I got out this mammoth storage box we have jammed with slides. There had to be a thousand of them in that box. Some marked up, one sheet for the first story I ever sold—on Ko Lipe in Thailand—to a magazine long dead.
It was fascinating. Not just looking at the few pics I have from that Vietnam trip (47 in total from eight weeks in-country!), but also for all the trips I’d forgotten I’ve ever even done.
This morning I was writing about Luang Prabang (again for Couchfish), and I found myself dragging my finger along my many bookshelves. I was looking for a few books I’d read either there, or about there, for inspiration, but instead found inspiration for so much else. So many memories.
The river is just so pretty. Photo: Cindy Fan.
Reading Jon Swain’s River of Time by the Mekong in Vientiane, Alfred McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, during a long stint in Mae Hong Son, Koch’s The Year of Living Dangerously while training through Vietnam. The books are all badly yellowed and dusty, but picking them up and leafing through them, the memories (and a fit of sneezing or two!) came flooding back. Oh and Lord of the Rings of course—read, twice, in a hammock on Ko Pha Ngan.
Sunsets forgotten, characters I’ve met over the years (there have been a few!) who have sunken into the mists of my memory. Food, madness, sadness, fun times and bus rides that felt like they would never end.
On one hand it made me sad, especially for the people who have left this earth or who I’ll most likely never see again. On the other hand though, as with the slides, when a long forgotten face radiates as the sun shines through it, the memories come back as fresh as day. Slides are special.
More Gibbon Experience views. Photo: Adam Poskitt.
I’m so lucky to have been able to travel as much as I have, to meet so many wonderful people and to have had experiences (good and bad) that have left such an indelible mark on the person I’ve become.
Travel changes you. It’s a cliche to say it opens your eyes, but it does. And over the last couple of days, ratting through fingerprint–smudged slides and leafing through dusty long forgotten books, I’ve realised that while I miss travel terribly, I have a lifetime of travel within the confines of my very own room.
So now, I guess, is the time to explore it.
Good travels
Stuart
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Ten things worth reading
A Writer’s Life
“This is when the writers come – after the hurricanes, and before the monsoons.” Really liked this piece.
Thai tropical paradise finds opportunity in adversity
“Thailand's international tourism trade dried up in late March as flights were curtailed. But some tourists stayed on at Koh Phangan and other popular resort destinations, choosing to sit out the pandemic in Thailand. Much larger numbers of migrant workers, mostly from neighboring Myanmar, have also remained, with no work or income.” A good piece on the Thai island scene, with a couple of quotes from me.
Another pearl in China’s string?
The shifting sands of what is going on on Cambodia’s islands.
Knowledge of the Durian
The durian must me the most written about fruit in Southeast Asia.
Travel done right
A collection of operations doing tourism the right way in Southeast Asia.
Marine tourism takes a dive in Bali
“But with the shutdown forcing everyone out of the water and back home, the industry is facing its biggest crisis yet.” Yup.
‘The disease still scares me’: A day with the COVID-19 testing team
Every one of the people in this story are heroes.
What is it like flying into Cambodia at the moment?
In Laos, signs of relief
“The joyless question remains. Has the virus passed over, or is it lying in wait?”
Bali floats travel bubble as way back for Australians
File this one under “highly unlikely.”
Something to read
Black Water
Black Water by Louise Doughty is a beautiful novel tracing the life of "John Harper", a name chosen by the son of an Indonesian-Dutch couple when he becomes an “operative” for the Amsterdam-based Institute.
Photo of the week
Treehouse. Gibbon Experience. Photo: Adam Poskitt.
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Travel light!