Stories

I have had many, many moments of extreme happiness in my life, and I am grateful for them all: scuba diving with great beasts in the Galapagos, riding on the back of a motorbike with Cambodia’s pink skies as my backdrop, hearing the calls to prayer for the first time while sitting on a rooftop in Istanbul, dancing like crazy on a Colombian dance floor, all those family dinners, those moments of personal achievement in school and work that have peppered my life. They are the highest highs I can think of. So many of my happiest moments have happened on the road, or with my family. But now I live in London, a stable, settled life. I am thousands of kilometres from those I love most. Although my career and my passion allows me to travel frequently, they are short holidays. And so, sitting in my flat in London, I found myself missing the high.

On our last day in Yangon, we went in search of food near the market. Tired and overwhelmed from wandering in and out of the maze of stalls, we wanted to find a place where we could sit down. As it was the middle of the afternoon, however, many places seemed to be shut. We rode our bikes into a parking lot, and noticed an unmarked restaurant to one side, so pulled up to see. There were no walls; it was just a cement slab with a wood roof over it, but there were a few wooden tables and red plastic stools, and a small kitchen to one side. Nobody else was there.

“Do you want something to eat?” A middle-aged man with a mustache and kind eyes approached us, speaking in perfect English.

We met on a sweaty night in the middle of Hanoi, high up on a balcony full of backpackers. In the middle of the balcony was an old bathtub full of ice; staff members from the bar kept refilling it with bottles of beer, trying to keep up with the raucous crowd. For some inexplicable reason, everyone was wearing pink sombreros, and the place was filled with kids barely old enough to drink, sunburnt, be-hatted, throwing their heads back in drunken laughter. And then: I saw you.

How quickly a place can feel like a home. I’ve been thinking about that a lot these days, especially as I’ve now lived in London for nine months, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I remember, years ago, reading the book Zeitoun by Dave Eggers while lying under a mosquito net in Thailand; in it, Zeitoun speaks of his travelling past, and that he knew he’d always settle down somewhere if he either found a woman he loved or a port that he loved. While I won’t speak on the former at the moment, I can certainly speak for the latter. I love London.

Before I could reach the ocean paradises of Bali and the Gilis, I wanted to spend a morning with Bromo. Gunung Bromo in Indonesian, it is part of the Tengger massif. Tenggerese people consider the volcano a significant one, and once a year offer vegetables, fruit, flowers, rice, and animal sacrifices to the Hindu gods, climbing the volcano and throwing them into the caldera. I wouldn’t climb Bromo, but I would climb Mount Penanjaken in order to watch the sun rise over the massif.

If you’ve read this blog long enough, or have ever glanced at my Media/PR page, you know that I get very suspicious of companies. There is no paid advertising on this blog, nor are there any sponsored links (not even hidden ones, what you see is what you get). While I’m willing to work with companies and tourism boards for complimentary trips and tours (like my visit to London Cru a few weekends ago), I have no desire to participate in anything that does not keep up with the theme of This Battered Suitcase, or that I think would not be beneficial to readers. I also almost always turn down product reviews.

So when Tom emailed me, I responded politely but firmly. “I won’t write a post specifically about your bracelet, or even guarantee that I will put El Camino in the title of a post,” I wrote. And yet here I am, two months later, doing both of those things. Why?