danielbaylis.ca

Dear Family and Friends,

Oh what a world!

My week in this world has brought a variety of adventures, some fun and some… errr… rather nasty. I thoroughly enjoyed a fortuitous personally guided tour from three novice monks to an abandoned Buddhist cave on the other side of the Mekong River. I appreciated less the bedbug fiasco of Tuesday night which left me with only 30 minutes of sleep and a string of bites down my back, on my elbow and upper leg. But such is the reality of the budget traveller – you gotta survive the bedbugs if you wanna get to the Buddhist caves!

Or something deliciously deep like that.

One of the highlights, however, was a couple of random meetings that reminded  that our seemly grand and lonesome planet, is actually quite teeny.

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On Thursday afternoon I was walking down the street. The sun had recently set, and as usual I was very much inside my head, envisioning how lovely it would be if one of my friends were standing at the upcoming street corner waiting to share a meal with me.

As the end of this journey approaches, I am experiencing increased yearnings to see the good people in my life.

To avoid on coming traffic, I moved off the street and onto the sidewalk, and as I was doing this, I saw a figure walking in the opposite direction pass on my left. Just seconds before I was dreaming of how lovely it would be to see a familiar face, and voila, here was a figure that I recognized!

We had, after all, spent nearly a year together.

‘Sandra?’ I inquired.

The woman looked at me blankly.

‘I’m afraid I don’t know who you are,’ replied the woman. And this was understandable. The man facing her was drastically different in physical appearance from the person she would remember. In her mind, most likely, the image of ‘Daniel Baylis’ was a school boy, a young lad with a squeaky voice and the facial hair of a nectarine – for Sandra, or ‘Ms. Hay’ as she was formally known back then, was my seventh grade teacher.

‘It’s Daniel Baylis, from Prince George.’

‘DANNY BAYLIS! What are you doing here?’

The chosen nomenclature confirmed the retro image – as a boy, I was ‘Danny’. (It’s a form of my name that, for many years, I worked diligently to eradicate, but now find entirely endearing.)

What coincidence! We chatted for several minutes about this happenstance, and agreed to meet for a meal later that evening.

So at 7 PM I stood outside the Luang Prabang National Museum waiting for my dinner date. Sandra, and her traveling companion Michelle, arrived shortly thereafter, and we wandered the streets to find a place to eat.

We settled in at L’ Elephant, one of Luang Prabang’s fanciest restaurants (this was a special occasion!) and shared stories of our respective adventures, our memories of 1992-93 school year and how Prince George (my hometown) is changing.

I had incidentally craved companionship, and the universe, in its special way, provided.

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The following day, I was returning to my guesthouse, again deep in thoughts with the usual script – What will I have for dinner? Where can I find some WiFi? Should I train for a triathlon? Can I donate my beard to cancer patients?

‘Daniel Baylis!’

I looked up to see three white men standing in front of me. At first, I was terribly confused.

‘Maybe I’m just getting, like, really famous?’ I thought to myself in an instance of illusionary arrogance.

And then my unfamousness slapped me like a Dutch pannekoeken.

Before me stood a man named Bart from The Netherlands who I had met in June while stumbling through Morocco. We had adventured together on a two-day excursion through the Atlas Mountains and into the Drahaa Valley. Bart was present when I met my camel/soul-mate, Petunia. And, in my books, anyone who knows Petunia is practically family!

We chatted for a few moments, and then arranged to have dinner in the Luang Prabang night market.

So again, at 7 PM, I stood waiting in the pre-arranged meeting place. Bart arrived, and we shared a couple bottles of Beerlao, a grilled river fish and heaping plates of steamed vegetables with noodles. Bart had begun his current expedition a couple of months previously and had wandered through Thailand and Vietnam, with plans to head into Myanmar. We compared travel notes and reveled in the happenstance of the second meeting.

Again, the universe provided friendship.

It’s funny how that works.

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As I travel, I’m fortunate to be in a position that inspires curiosity. People are eager to understand my motives, my emotions, my trajectory, my learnings and even how I finance my travels. I consider myself an open book, and I’m happy to share my understandings and experiences of the world. But for some reason I tend to chuckle internally when I get fielded forms of these questions:

- Isn’t it difficult to travel alone?
- Don’t you get lonely?
- Are you homesick?

These queries revolve around the reality of being a solo traveler, and the potential loneliness that might result from traveling in solitude. I chuckle primarily because there is an assumption that I wasn’t experiencing these things before I left for my yearlong adventure. For the seven years that I lived in Montreal, I certainly had my moments of loneliness and homesickness and confusion. Living a non-traveling life does not equate a lack of lonesomeness.

It’s true, however, that the strategies to deal with these emotions are different on the road. I can’t simply visit a friend and quell my sensations of loneliness. So I rely on other strategies: skyping my sister, reading a book, talking to the moon or going to a pub and permitting alcohol to inspire haphazard conversation with other courageous loners. All are valid tactics.

My bigger concern is the type of person that I would become if I permitted the fear of loneliness (or fear of anything, really) to dictate my life. And if moments of loneliness are the byproduct of living my dream, I’ll take the loneliness and the dream over the sensation of sitting at home wondering if I am capable of living my dream.

It’s actually quite rational.

Besides, as demonstrated this week, it’s a small world after all. And one never knows who might be found along the journey – lovely people who are reminders that, despite fleeting sensations of loneliness, we are never actually alone.

With contented lonesomeness,

xoxo

Daniel

PS: Check out the quick interviews with Sandra and Bart!

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