In short

It is all over now, and amazingly I am back in my room, where I started. It seems important to summarize this particular moment. Five weeks ago, I was right here. Four weeks ago, I was in Aruba, just off the coast of Venezuela. Three weeks ago, I was on Ko Tao, in the Gulf of Thailand. Two weeks ago, I was in Pai, northeast of Chiang Mai near the Burmese border. One week ago, I was in Maui, in the foothills of the huge Haleakala. Now I am right here again, and it's as if nothing has changed.

What did I do? I walked, sweated, read, ate, and occasionally talked. I tried to make sense of the Thai people I met, most of whom were serving me in one way or another, unfortunately. I looked for authenticity -- whatever that means -- and stole glimpses of it when I was quiet enough. People lived in Thailand, and I wandered through its streets as if in a museum. To the Thai I was the exhibit, but not a terribly interesting one.

I followed routes familiar to travelers. They were many, and I was among them, but I was mostly alone. This was what I had wanted, but a few weeks into it I could not tell anymore and began to wonder if I had overjudged my affinity for loneliness.

I spent a lot of time in planes, trains, and buses. I was usually in my best mood when on the move in these vehicles. It became easy to explain why I was on a trip like this. Why do I travel? Because I am on a train. The train moves through the dusk and heads out toward the countryside. The conductor pulls out the berths and spreads out the linens. The shoreside towns pass by my window unseen. The destination is tomorrow, and until then I am moving through space.

In the end, I craved the company of familiar people, and I was fortunate enough to have a stop with old friends on a lonely but familiar group of islands in the Pacific. People need people: was this what I had sought to learn? Maybe, although I have always needed people, and anyway I should resist these urges to distill spans of time into a point. So here are some other lessons learned, and epiphanies realized: Thailand is hot and humid, and I sweat incredibly when eating; Thai people are small and beautiful; I need to learn how to ride a motorcycle; Bangkok as a city needs to be air-conditioned; the underwater world is amazing at night; Germans speak excellent English and make superior divemasters; the French do not hate Americans, but reject all things American; huge geckos do not feed on huge spiders, but both may still eat people; upper berths are better than the lower and night trains are better than the day; Pai has good pizza, and soon Tee will no longer run Bebe's; I have the ability to bore myself at will; Asian airlines are superior to American ones; centipedes bite people, and take a long time to die; Genghis Khan sure fathered a lot of babies, from central Europe to east Asia; the altitude and the chill of Haleakala may turn your arms numb, but the sunset over the clouds and the star show that follows are beautiful enough to trigger an episode of soul searching.

Still, I am not sure what to make of anything I did or saw in the past month, and that is probably good. Let us resist interpretation. Let us welcome uncertainty.