Countdown with Resfeber

October 2013

RESFEBER: From Swedish, the look of anxiety and excitement in one who is about to travel

Perfume River, Vietnam Lucy Munday 2012

I have finally finished procrastinating and booked a flight to leave England - in three month’s time.  My case of ‘Resfeber’ is intensifying as the countdown continues. The previous month’s realisation that I’ve got used to life here, mixes with the knowledge that I must carry on down the rabbit warren, creating a cocktail of appreciation for my current situation, fear of rocking the boat and a clingy desire to be a grown up - heaven forbid.

I know, what a first world problem. What do you do poor thing? Stay and live in an exciting city near to home, or travel to paradise? Well I tell you where the problem (if we can even call it that, maybe anxiety, misgivings or even just neurosis), I tell you where the misgivings come from - this symptom of ‘Resfeber’. I have got used to having a spice rack. And bed sheets, and drawers over living out of a bag. I have got used to being in the same time zone as friends and family. I have got used to having Branston pickle available in any supermarket for a fair price. Well, fairer than Australia.

These reasonings are fairly superficial and seemingly ridiculous ways to question why, how and when to spend a year in one of the most beautiful islands in the world. As it’s second time around, there should be more excitement than the first time. I know to some degree what awaits, and also how to deal with most logistical errors. I will meet many people, I will recognise the smell of the continent, the way the sunlight fades in to the horizon, the inspiring culture and sensory and tactile way of life there.

This is the big one. It’s a grander scale of travel than I have encountered before. Not only moving to one place far away, but a place where English isn’t the first language. Where I will stay for 12 months- the most sedentary I have been for over two years. Earning a wage far lower than what I am accustomed to. After so much upheaval, I’m testing myself with even more. I just have to ensure the reasons are right. First or second time, it doesn’t really feel like it’s happening until you’re on the plane. Even sitting on the plane, safety card in hand, is still quite surreal. When familiar with the sensation, does it not make it all the more or less intimidating?

…

Half way through the month I was sent to Scotland for work. How lovely, you think, and it was! London is an intoxicating great big bubble of a city, which to escape from is sometimes like taking in a big deep gulp of air after being underneath the surface of a busy swimming pool. Scotland is fresh, crisp and full of friendly people who walk at a normal speed. I enjoyed being away, and coming back, until I stepped off the train. The next few days were a concoction of being prodded with the inescapable annoyances of big city life that I could previously ignore. I gritted my teeth on public transport, huffed at queues and hated every person who barged in to me- apparently I’m so short I’m invisible.

Then I settled back in. I became a quick paced, barging, furrow-browed Londoner once more. I once had a friend from Germany come to stay with me, who described Londoners at rush hour as ‘all looking so stressed.’ I accepted once more the pace, and signs everywhere telling you to get a mortgage, contribute to the economy, just be happy with what you have and count your blessings. Of course there’s zero wrong with that, if it’s what you want. But I could be happy (because of experience) not adhering to the paradigm.

But as the days tick by I grow ever more attached to that paradigm. The ‘strike it hot-iron’ has grown a bit cool and the bull-shit fog encircles my head. It’s the fog that is inevitable in such a work driven city, where Friday night drinks rule and you wind up living for the weekend. My travel self- everyone has one- is the person in you that has a low bullshit capacity, who doesn’t buy package deals, or do what they’re supposed to, hates spending money on bed sheets and possibly questions the need to shower every day. My travel self is saying “You’ve changed.” My travel self resists walking as fast as everybody else in the crowd. My travel self prefers to gaze up at planes criss-crossing above the sky-scrapers. My London self (or England self?) is in a terrible rush, and does NOT speak to strangers. My London self wants to buy a coffee table and enjoy bottles of red wine with friends. So does my travel self. She just wants to do it somewhere else.

In the words of Mike Skinner, “Its the end of something I did not want to end…But something that was [possibly] not meant to be is done, And this is the start of what was.” *

Why I could possibly not be excited to leave for beautiful tropical Asia, is beyond me; how I could want to stay on in the soggy dark winter, when in the words of a good friend, ‘when you first got back to London you had this look on your face that just said, “what the fuck am I doing here?”.’ So after much neurotic over analysis, or deliberation, which seems to have no end as yet, I think I’ve found some answers. 

I’m happy. A happiness to be home that surprised me. There are worse reasons to be apprehensive. In fact there are far more valid reasons to be apprehensive, but there you have it. Life has moved me on to, rather shifting, new priorities, ideas and friends. I still want to be a travel writer, to travel the globe and experience as much of its’ variations as possible. At present however, returning to Asia feels like a visit in to something paused; some unfinished business with the hypnotic seedy underbelly and idyllic beautiful paradise of that continent. Am I doing the right thing, is a question I chew on over and over, like a rubbery old steak. I have to go back there to find out for sure. As the time slips by and my departure nears, I remember how tiring it can be to be constantly saying goodbye to people and I appease myself with the notion that nothing is final. The Resfeber symptoms subside and I reach for another cheese and pickle sandwich while I can.

* lyrics from ‘Empty Cans’ by The Streets, from the album ‘A Grand Don’t Come for Free’ 2004.
If there is anyone out there reading this in a similar situation and feeling similar emotions, I thank you for bearing with my falderal and I hope it proves helpful and maybe even a little comforting.

4 months until the move to Asia

September 2013 

What a lucky summer we've had! In England, summer is usually not so impressive, but this year the sun gods smiled down, for a full two months! Short to some but it counts for an entire summer here, if you count the buildup, more than occasional bouts of rain and drops in temperature. Just to remind you you're in England. And the access to English food has been lovely really. I imagine my homeland's comforts sound fairly vile to some other countries, but it's my home land and my home comforts. Some times that lack of access to them can be a bit wearing. Such as the times you're homesick and all you want is a cheese and pickle sandwich. or when its raining and you think, Mum's stew would go down well right now, oh.

But the time has come. To jauntily set off in to the sun shouting 'screw you bitches!' Actually that's not how it goes for me. Personally, I think the process is a little more involved than dramatically having an epiphany, packing one's bags and sticking your thumb out at the roadside. As much as the romanticised version appeals. It's far more, hmm don't think I should buy those shoes. Have I got insurance organised? Have do I tell my boss I'm leaving?

I've been waking from very lucid or just profound dreams. I'm positive I'm lost, in the wrong place and my eyes won't open. Instead of panicking I wonder around for a long time with pieces of paper in my hands, sure that I'll sort it all out, even though I can't read them. The paper is blank. Of course it makes you question if what you're headed to is the right thing. But then everyone tells you you have to go, you must do this, you'll regret it if you don't. And you remember these dreams from the last time you were imminently bound for new territory. 

I know this is the right thing. I know I'm going. I know I've got comfy at home, having a web of friends, family and fish and chips at my fingertips. In fact I've got so comfy I've got complacent. I'm sitting underneath a layer of thick green algae, in a great big lake, watching all the other tadpoles swim about merrily, avoiding fish that may gulp us down, and gazing up at the dragonflies buzzing above. I croak away silently about how much I don't understand businessmen. Despite the great surrounding buzz and shifting wider waters, no answers appear to swim before me in my own moribund little pond of stagnation. After realising I have become still, in one of the busiest cities in the world, (which beggars belief) I've reached another stage. Resentment. 

I don't like resenting things, places or especially people. It's unfair on others around you as well as yourself. It's even unfair on the natural beauty nearby that you're unable to appreciate. I needed to take another step. The visa is processing but that's not enough for me. After being advised not to book flights until the visa is through, and for totally justifiable financial reasons, I book a flight. One way to Thailand. 

I do have practicality on my side. As I've said before, I'm chasing my dreams and trying to make them come true. I quite like that lifestyle. I quite like the Asian lifestyle too, which is a rather nifty bonus when immigrating out there. There's also the fact that I rather neglectfully left all my passion, energy, enthusiasm, suffice to say my heart, back there. So I have to go back to pick it up. 

image: Sunrise over Nha Trang, Vietnam, October 2012 

copyright Lucy Munday

Dreaming of Asia

London, cusp of summer & Autumn 2013

Under a thunderous sky, my end of day commute aboard a strobe lit train, provided a tantalising stab of excitement. As I read an article on Thai islands, I remembered the deep calm I felt on that last journey. I don't know if you are familiar with extreme amounts of relaxation on an extended holiday; giving zero shits is what we all lack in our daily work lives. I really miss that.

Normally, when the days begin to shorten, leaves drop from the trees and chill mounts in the air, I can get a little sad for the end of summer. As well as envious for more sparkling blue seas and white powdery beaches. This Autumn a distinct lack of upset for summer's death was present. Sitting on that train I felt as if I was turning a key in a lock. An action I was about to take, a cog in a great big machine (the cogs in questions would be goals), that might possibly one day churn out a few dreams. 

Like most people I spent the majority of my childhood  day dreaming of sprouting wings, mainly so I could fly out of school. And like most people, for a very long time, I didn't act on them. Mainly because I wasn't at school any more. You've heard this story before. 

A little over two years ago I landed in Australia, fresh off the boat and seaweed still in my ears. It was all very sparkly, sunny, the air smelt of eucalyptus and burnt skin and I loved all these new and unique sensations so familiar to every backpacker. After a very long detour to New Zealand, allowing myself enough time to play in some snow and pretend I was a rather accident prone hobbit- well I am pretty short- I found my way back to Australia, where the real fun would begin. I worked on a farm, found my love of dogs, found my love of Australians deepen, found some long lost family, found some rad people to converse with on multiple occasions and did what most people living in, visiting and working in Australia do. Got drunk. Regularly. Until they gave me the boot, however not for drinking- I would like to make that clear! 

Getting thrown out of a country is a rather dramatic occasion. You do tend to questions where exactly you went wrong and spend most of this period with a nasty case of the 'what-ifs' and if-onlys'. As it happens, you shouldn't try to organise yourself too far in advance of these extended loner trips. That was where I slipped up. The second mistake was trusting a travel agent to deal with my visa. But, being made of elastic, I bounced back. I bounced so well I made it to another continent. Rather than slinking quietly home in a baffled and downcast stupor, to 'just keep going' was really the only option. Which means 'So then there was Asia'. And then there was Asia. 

I can say without a doubt I haven't spent one day since departing that locale, without dreaming of a return. Being free to act on any proactive tendency, I turned away from computers, 9-5 and a coffee habit, and for the second time, I chose reality over dreaming. To journey from a half memory to the vision of that hazy paradise where everybody acts as they would in utopia. 

You know when you wake up, and you can't quite remember what you were dreaming of. A few minutes pass or whole hours and you remember at the oddest of actions. Sometimes much later they come back as snippets of reality, as if a past event or déjà-vu...

(beginning with the months before travel.. .)??

11 December 2012 

I arrived back in England after 21 months of the other side of the world. That incident which keeps me from staying out much longer is just a hiccup, I keep telling myself. At least I got to see Asia as a trade off, and I promise myself I'll go back. To the smell of burning wood and spice, where tooting tuk tuk cabs honk their noses in your direction and the light seems more ephemeral. Where great sea green palms wave in the wind and bright blue seas show their innards. Where thickly clustered trees hide their creatures.