Restless Me - Alternative Travel

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Autumn 2005

Restless Me Base Camp for the Global Traveler

As I Write This . . .
After a trip to Thailand, a traveler trapped in the world of advertising reflects on how her journeys have shaped her.

by Nicole Trilivas

As I write this I’m sitting in an advertising office in Manhattan. I do not have a window in my office, but around one o’clock in the afternoon light tiptoes in from the office across the hall and shades my eggshell wall a musty yellow. As I write this I watch the sun catch the leaves of a near-dead, lucky bamboo stalk, and I think of Thailand. In addition to hording the sunshine, the office across the hall is home to a wretched watercolor picture of three sunflowers in a yellow pot. It looks like rehab art.

Despite popular beliefs held mainly by my boss and co-workers, I don’t actually work in advertising. Instead, I spend my days fostering my freelance writing career out of their office. This is my Gandhi–like, peaceful protest against corporate America. Like wasting copy paper can compensate for being underpaid and overqualified. And it’s a little too peaceful, actually, considering no one’s aware of it but you and I. I don’t think Gandhi would condone abusing office supplies anyway.

As I write this I’m tragically sad. I’m frustrated that I have to write this in the body of an email instead of on Word as to not attract suspicion. (I just had a vision of a 3rd grade-esque punishment of having to read this aloud to the company’s president — more embarrassed at the poor transitions than the subject matter.)

I’ve always wrote to save my life, and now’s no exception. And yes, the situation is really as dire as I make it out to be. I’m an addict in withdrawal. Travel’s supposed to leave an impression on you, but not track marks.

I know I’m doing it again. Pathologically lying to myself by exalting my time in Thailand as the pinnacle in personal happiness, and assuming the next exotic destination will be the fix for my perpetual restlessness, but maybe this time it will be. I really believe that.

For someone who has glorified travel as the cure-all, I still begin each expedition the same way. I do not learn from my past mistakes. Though I count myself the seasoned traveler, at the start of each trip I proceed with trepidation as if it’s my maiden voyage. Latched like a shy child to logic’s shin, I am anxiety-ridden and cumbersome.

I am my massive backpack; over-prepared, over-packed, overstuffed. I defy my innately blithe Mediterranean roots, and think how very American of me to have zip-locked every mini shampoo bottle away from one another, then proceeded to zip-lock them into their own baggie lest they mingle with the conditioner! Wait that’s not American of me — it’s psychotic.

I get to Bangkok, and still I am burdened by both earthy possessions and an irresolute mind. I am fat, still. I sit over a plate of banana pancakes and chain-smoke five cigarettes. It’s not even 10 a.m. yet. There are maps in front of me. I trace my path. I nervously plan. The heat’s unbearable, but it begins to feel honest to sweat.

I sit at the foot of the porcelain Temple of Dawn. There they fly, fly, fly, and they might as well; free to flutter and bat their velum wings. Twenty birds of my disillusionment rise to the sky. I mentally cajole them to come sit with me; instead one shits on my shoe. In Italy it’s considered an auspicious sign, and I hope it’s the same in Thailand. My face is beginning to read like a jejune novel.

I’ve wasted many years being sad. Chewing little white pills to balance the skewed chemicals. They all told me it wasn’t my fault, but it always was. I’m probably the only non-Catholic racked with this much guilt.

I seek portability. After many moons orbiting to the tempo of trance music on Khao San Road, sleeping in between paper-thin walls, and waking up in crystals of salt from my sweat, I begin to feel it. Today I’m a wandering ascetic: I am filthy in the earth’s dust. I am the penitent woman. These are my Hail Marys, and with each word I exhale towards the misty heavens, I inhale back spiritually. As I part with ripped jeans in train station bathrooms and discard near-empty shampoo bottles, I am becoming lighter and lighter of my heavy load. I am purging my burden, my sybaritism, my materialism, and my self-doubt. I simply am devoid of room for it. How quick I am to clean my house when I find it upon my back.

Such clarity! Such speed! I am smoke, dust and air itself; nimble, vaporous. Ever moving, I’m an iridescent shape shifter. Snake-like, I can now agilely slither untethered through the crowded Bangkok market. I amalgamate with the background like a figure in a Sarrat painting, but I’m somehow so much more luminescent than his amorphous, gray landscapes. No, not dismal and colorless, I’m harvest moon gold like the robe of the Buddhist monks. Steady and barefoot, they pace the temples. The night Buddha passed on from his earthly life and entered nirvana, the moon blushed in that incandescent, rich hue that the monks drape themselves in. This is why the reclining Buddha, sleepy, serene, and spiritually prepared to untie his soul, is most holy. I envy their poise, their knowing, and their clarity and brevity in the dealings of this dirt-stained human world.

I’ve learned from them; from this entire enchanted land. When you’ve refilled the same disposable water bottle for a month, a Starbucks on every corner looks excessive. After wandering through tight-knit rainforest, shrubs growing out of little squares of earth in the concrete look too contrived. When you’ve survived in the same shirt and pants for two weeks, $200 sunglasses seem extreme. But when you’ve starved, cheap, fast food seems glorious, and when you’re nearly dying of loneliness the telephone seems miraculous.

Insert your buzzwords here: I’m centered! Renewed! At peace! Cured! Saved! Let me hear a halleluiah! That’s not what this story is about.

Insert your Aesop's moral here: See what you can live without! Look how good you have it! Look how fortunate you are! You should be more grateful! (Oops, there’s that Catholic guilt veering around the corner at me again.) That’s not what this story is about.

I’m not saying travel cured me. I'm also not going to say that it saved or renewed my soul. Somehow though, like all great adventures and all traumatic experiences, it has wielded me into the person I am — flawed and imperfect and not okay with being so. Still I look to the great wide road — not to fix myself, but maybe to make sense of myself. Unlike Dorothy, I’m not happy with my own backyard.

As you read this I’m in Thailand. I’m sitting in an uncomfortable plastic chair at the café of a shanty guesthouse watching a tuk-tuk try to maneuver through the crowded street. I can hear a Thai child crying in his mother’s arms startled by the staccato honks. As you read this I’m drinking coffee, cloyed with sweet, condensed milk, and playing with a plastic lighter I still carry though I’ve given up cigarettes. That’s what I’d like to believe anyway.

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Nicole Trilivas is a 2005 graduate of Boston University who is currently working in advertising in New York City, and is also working part time as a freelance travel writer. As a self-proclaimed serial-backpacker, she has bounced around almost every European country and parts of Asia. Most recently she returned from India, and is already planning her next trip to the South Pacific where she intends on spending vast amounts of time lounging about, drinking local beer, and avoiding malaria.