The Obligatory Travel Conversation

It's not long traveling until you realize you've had the same conversation with everyone you've met. Where are you from? Oh, I've been there, [say hello in their language]. Where did you come from? How was it? What's your name? Cool. Where are you going? I've heard that place is a-MA-zing. How long are you traveling for? Oh, I'm traveling for longer (thought silently).

This "conversation" is mandatory, and some people just love it. It bores the hell out of me. It's truly miserable after the hundreth time. You get the same set of answers. I know it's necessary though - you have to start somewhere. You can't just walk up to someone in a foreign land, shake their hands, make creepy eye contact and ask them if they believe in god. Unless you're a Mormon or Jehovah's Witness.

Like I said, some people wallow happily in it like pigs in shit. I try to get it over with as quickly and abruptly as possible, so I can move on to more interesting things. I rely heavily on trolley/surgeon dilemmas just to hear what people say. Not familiar with trolley dilemmas? The bro over at Philosophy Bro can give you the lowdown.

A certain someone I traveled with for four months seemed to put up with the obligatory conversations pretty well. Sorry brosef, but I remember we met someone once, might've been the Swiss girl in the van to Luang Prabang, and as you two were having the Conversation, I just thought, Kill Me Now. By now a seasoned traveler, I know at this point you're regaling all sorts of people with far more dialogs.

Anyway, Adam and I relied heavily on Would You Rathers to entertain each other, and soon employed classics like "Would you rather spend the rest of your life with latex gloves on, or have your fingers perpetually covered in Doritos powder?" to keep other travelers on their toes. There's always Would You Rathers concerning superpowers, but flying always wins, so it's not so interesting.

The Conversation is possible to overcome. Once the basics are laid down, a blunt question is generally acceptable, and you can move on to discussing involuntary organ-harvesting from executed Chinese convicts.

For the record, I support organ-harvesting, but I don't support the death penalty. If you're gonna ice some people though, might as well make use of them. That was a good conversation to have on a rooftop bar below the peaks of Yangshuo, even when a pony-tailed over-the-hill Canadian hippie butted in and started talking about slippery moral slopes and living and dying for ideals, and his younger sidekick really missed the point and started mentioning souls.

One of the best responses I got from one Conversation was from an Australian girl in Hue. At some point early on I asked her where she was from but she seemed not to hear and instead went on talking about the book she read that brought her to this town. About twenty minutes later when there was a break in the conversation, she said, "I'm from Sydney." I asked you that like twenty minutes ago, replied I. "Yeah, I don't really like to get into that stuff so soon."

At least I know I'm not the only one sick of it. Hey, thanks for stopping by.

Luang Prabang

Usually when I imagine myself traveling when I'm not traveling, I like to imagine sitting in some small exotic city, comfortably wasting time in a shady cafe while life goes by in the cool breeze, thinking profound thoughts and being content.

I can't say I've had any profound thoughts. I have resolved to actually go through with my plan to try and hitchhike to India on a boat from Thailand, mainly because the prospect of absolute failure has suddenly and strangely begun to appeal to me.

I've also been reading another Haruki Murakami book. There's plenty of profound thoughts in there which save me from coming up with my own.

But the city of Luang Prabang has every other aspect of my disembodied travel fantasies. It's tiny, in the middle of nowhere, it occupies a thin river peninsula and is full of colonial French architecture. Cafes, boutiques, white-washed cement with dark wood and awnings. It should be in an issue of Martha Stewart's magazine.

It's remarkably quiet, especially after the boozy circus that was Vang Vieng. For two days Adam and I have done nothing but wander around and drink beer on riverside decks, make friends and lounge on mattresses on shaded platforms on hills across bamboo bridges, and relax on our massive balcony.

I left my passport at the Indian embassy in Vientiane, and that's another thing I always imagined while traveling: taking it slow while you get visas for places even more exotic than the one you're in. I also kinda imagined myself reading newspapers and having coffee, but I hate coffee and haven't read a newspaper for ages.

That's okay. I'll settle for wading in turquoise waterfall pools and strolling down quiet streets past orange-robed monks coming in and out of the the temples which are hidden among the trees and villas.