Momentary Mumblings: Bangkok Trip 2010

Coming from recent trips, I realized that the thing I love most about traveling is the perspective it gives you long after you've settled back home.  It gets you out of the daily grind of life, and makes you look at things differently.  Sometimes you can be in a rut without even knowing it, and traveling is the perfect cure to the uninspired life.

I would say that I'm a person with relatively O.C. tendencies.  Sure my office desk is a hopeless clutter 99% of the 365 days given to us each year, but my obsessive ways reflect on other parts of my life like say,  itineraries.  I'm a planner by nature, and I even get more anal when I know that I can depend on no one but myself.

And so, for our recent trip to Bangkok, I planned every single detail up to the entrees to order in the restaurants I chose based on internet reviews.  Fares were computed and routes chosen depending on the cheapest possible transportation available.  If that wasn't bad enough, I even had back-up plans in case our transportation plans didn't work out.  Skytrain, cabs, even bus numbers were in the itinerary.  Yes, I admit to my obsessive ways but there's nothing wrong with being prepared.

If there was one thing I learned from this trip, it's that itineraries are meant to be broken.  People wake up late (and by that, I would mean me), people stay too long in one place, they change their minds, and the list goes on.  Things happen, and even a million back-up plans can't stop them from happening.  The point is, traveling teaches you to be flexible.  Think quick, prioritize, but most of all, have fun and make the most out of what you have. 

You can't plan every single detail in your trip, but you look for the things that are important enough to insist on.  In that aspect, traveling is a lot like life in fast forward.  You may have a life plan all written down, but not everything pans out the way you plan it.

You accept, you adjust, and you work on the new direction life takes you to.  Our time here isn't infinite as much as we'd like to think otherwise.  The sooner we accept it, the sooner we realize that life is riddled with choices, but has little room for regrets.