There are some very quirky people in the world and the best place to meet them are in hostels. They all have stories to tell and many of them are more than willing to share them.
As we were sitting watching TV, three young men came to sit down with us. They said they had been doing homestays and volunteering projects building houses. They said they had been in Malaysia for about two months and were so happy to get to know local people. They had done hiking and told us they saw a huge snake not to far from them. Instead of being scared they seemed thrilled by the "luck" they had in encountering it so closely. I don't know if I could say the same for us, though when we did see a snake from our boat it was rather thrilling, especially since the one we saw was more than 3 meters long! But that is another tale that I will tell later. One of the younger boys said he was going home and that he wanted to study biology. I think this trip really did inspire him. He seemed happy to be going home but the day when he left he said he was really regretting it and was going to miss this "beautiful country". The other men were off to Thailand and were going to rent a motorbike, they seemed a bit more rugged and wilder.
Later we met another man named, Meika an investment banker who had been traveling on and off for more than ten years or so. He wore real ragged clothes, this he told us was how he traveled, he said he tried to look as "shitty" as possibly so that people were less likely to mug him. He had just come from Banga Indonesia. As he put it, he had just "come back to civilization". Apparently were he was people served dog as food, pig as well, since it was a Christian area. His accommodations had no electricity. I think this was his idea of real travel, I think he thrived from this sort of adventure. To Kevin and I Malaysia was already seeming more second, and in some places third world, in comparison to Taiwan. I guess we were only starting to scratch the surface.
Anyways, he also told Kevin that his goal was to drive in this special vehicle that he was getting fixed, from Paris to Vladivostok! Later he told us it was also his dream to drive across the Gobi desert in Mongolia. As we chatted for at least an hour or more, he managed to tell us the best way to drive your car out of sand and through dunes. He said that we should go to Indonesia because Thailand would be extremely hot, and Laos and Cambodia would be raining A LOT. He said Laos was beautiful, quiet and had the back in time feel. I think he loved the Asia that everyone imagines, poor, friendly, dangerous, poverty stricken, beautiful landscape and underdeveloped. Though he was not ignorant to the demands of the new world and the right that everyone had to a modern way of life. I can understand though how he and many other travelers, desire the exotic Asia, the offbeat road. Though everything is changing, it seems that the third world is joining in the "modern" way of life and that out of time Asia is fading into a place that exists only in the traveler's imagination, though any sort of travel really is a way of the imagination, a search for something inspirational and even spiritual. But real travel clashes with these dreams and shows us something completely different and if you are strong enough, perhaps you can come back with something deeper. I hope we can find this strength.
Best of luck to all you travelers out their searching for their big dreams.
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