Suddenly, a whole new world is opening up to me. I am getting an opportunity to travel when I hadn’t thought of it before and it is a wondrous thing! I’m especially pleased because I’ve been wanting to explore this part of the world, but it’s hard to fit in weekend trips when all I want to do is sleep. I’m reminiscing of my days spent exploring the wonders of Europe, with little more than my Eurail pass and train schedule to guide my way. It was an uncertain, yet exciting time and things didn’t always work out so well, but in the end it was certainly all worth it. My second time around was more stable and my friend and I had pretty stable places to stay, but even then we found ourselves wandering the streets of Paris for three hours until about 3 AM, trying to find our way back to the hotel in the early hours of my birthday. Adventurous with a tinge of mystery and risk (though not quite danger, thankfully).
So now, fantastical images are filling my head of all the lovely places I can go and the fun things I can do. Explore the coasts and beaches? I’m there! Take a little ride along the river? I’d love to! Ride an elephant? Show me the way! From luxury to wild, including massages and mudbaths or toughing it out in the middle of nowhere, I’d love to go do it. I just need to find all the cool things to do and plan out this amazing expedition. Of course, I’m also going to be cautious and try to find some buddies to come along or stay with friends along the way, but if all else fails, I’ve traveled solo before and I’ll just be smart about where I go and how I act. I’ve certainly had to take many random precautions before just so I wouldn’t be picked out as a target. That would mean leaving the valuables at home and traveling relatively light with just one little suitcase. But hey, that’s all part of the fun of it!
At this point everything is very tentative, but I’m quite sure I will be doing a fair share of exploring, though the actual cities and number of countries I manage to make it to is completely up in the air. So is my final departure date from Singapore, which I’m looking to move up by a few weeks (upwards of a month). After all, I don’t want to spend too much time traveling and there’s no point in staying too much longer since I’ve got a great feel for the company culture here and much of the work I do is completely doable from a remote location. Plus, I miss Panda terribly, there’s no sense in troubling too many people for too long with a complicated living situation, and though I really enjoy the people and vibe of C&S, I’ve never been a fan of working at a desk. There will be so much I will miss about this place when it really comes time to head off indefinitely, but there’s also no sense in stretching resources thin when there’s no real reason to.
And thus I enter another transitional period of my life. 🙂