Turning Thirty

As my Big Three-O is coming at me faster than you can say "over the hill," I can't help but ask myself, "What the hell happened to my twenties?" Let's see: college, work, master's degree, burn out, quit everything, become a drifter, then medical school. And we're all up to speed - that's ten years in one sentence!

I have nothing to show for what I'd done in the last ten years. Well, as far as material things are concerned anyway. When I moved away from DC, all my worldly possessions could fit in my car. Now I don't even have a car to gauge what I have. I still live on a shoestring budget; I have to constantly watch what I'm spending my money on - not so different from ten years ago. And yet, I'm content. So why am I so comfortable with where I am? You can even say I take pride in my proletarian life. Worse, I don't really find anything appealing about the American Dream - a nine-to-five job, house, cars, gadgets. That's why I've done nothing to chase that dream. Instead, every chance I get, I daydream about the places I may travel to during my next break. Most of the time, they'd have to remain being daydreams. Sometimes, though, those daydreams turn into reality, like Tibet, Southwestern China, Southeast Asia, Australia, and the cross country drives in the US.

Or like now with Vietnam.

I was in Vietnam last year. I didn't really see Vietnam at all. I spent most of the nine days in the country looking out the window of a train or a bus. In Hanoi, I happened to pick up Catfish and Mandala by Andrew Pham and read the whole book in one go. Part travelogue, part memoir, it was about this Vietnamese American who returned to Vietnam and rode his bike up and down the country. I'd seen plenty of travelers on their bikes, even in Tibet. This book, for some reason, really gave me the inspiration to hop on a bike and start riding. Okay, riding a bike in Vietnam is not exactly charting new territories. It's been done to death by so many people even Lonely Planet published a guidebook on that topic. Regardless, it's a brand new adventure for me. I thought it'd be a good way to finish my third decade of life and start the fourth. So I scraped together enough frequent flyer miles collected over the last ten years to get myself a free flight from Australia to Vietnam.

And the rest were minor details.