Travel: Food for the Soul.

Lately, I've been thinking about why people travel. I don't mean a week holiday in an all-inclusive resort in the Bahamas. I mean something like quitting your job, or taking a three month hiatas, and just going, going, gone to all corners of the Earth. For me, my body craves the concoxion of feelings that come from traveling. The trepidation of, "What if?" mixed with the excitement of, "What if?" is the food for my soul. Traveling is like a herion fix for an addict. I'm addicted to that excitement of the unknown, I need the slight panicky feeling of having no idea where I am at or where I am going, and having to speak to people using exaggerated hand guestures in place of words. I spend my time wondering when I will get my next fix. It can never come soon enough.

For me, the best part of traveling is the fact that you just don't know what is going to happen. You can not plan it. You can't expect anything. I need to know that I have no control over situations. Some of the best experiences of my life came from unplanned events. I once flew to Fukoka, Japan, for a visa run from Korea. I was only planning on being there for two days. Along the way, I came across another 'visa-runner' from Korea and we scoured Japan looking for a cheap guesthouse. While we were looking for a good restaurant, my friend asked some random Japanese couple on the street for a restaurant recommendation, and we ended up eating sushi with them in a small diner, where the plates of sushi move around the bar on a conveyor belt, learning Japanese as we ate.

I had always dreamed of eating sushi in Japan, but never thought it would be at a local sushi restaurant with two Japanese people, teaching us Japanese.

And as luck would have it, the next day my visa was denied, so the day after that, I was on a plane to the good ol' U.S. of A. to figure it out. I spent four unexpected days in Los Angeles, sleeping in a Korean sauna in Korea town for $20 a night and my days were spent driving to all corners of the city and hitting the beaches. Point: You never know what's gonna happen. So just go with it....

There was this other time, when I was traveling from Bangkok to Koh Samui in an overnight van with some friends, the local Thai driver decided to take a detour in the middle of the night to his hometown village (somewhere between the two before-mentioned places) to pick up some doja from his dealer (that's Thailand). So, while he was taking care of business, he dropped us at some outside restaurant. Don't be confused by the word "restaurant". It consisted of a long, dilapidated picnic table with some plastic chairs that had been around since the turn of the 19th century. We didn't know what to eat, so a woman fried us some little fish (heads, eyes and all) and we ate it with Thai sauce. Of course, the locals in that little village had never seen us 'white-skinned' people, so we got the google eyes from all the passer-bys while we ate. That's part of the program when traveling in Asia though.

Then, the driver came back and on the road again we were: One high Thai driver and seven Americans.

There are tons of stories like these from backpackers all over the world. Each one unique in its own way. If I could quit my job and become a professional traveler, I would do it in a New York minute. However, until that day comes, I will remain a lowly English teacher, saving my money for the next big trip and spending my days in between dreaming of beaches, airplanes, and high Thai bus drivers.