Same same, but different

I spent the past month backpacking through Vietnam and Cambodia and just came home last night, even though I was due at work this morning. With back-to-back flights from Cambodia to Vietnam and then a 15-hr flight from Hong-Kong, some would call arriving back at the very last minute “unwise�?. I prefer to call it “stupid�?, but I still wouldn’t have done it any other way. I spent most of my time in Northern Vietnam; Hanoi, Halong Bay, Sapa, and then Hoi-An and Danang in Central Vietnam. My friend and I indulged in everything: lemongrass chicken, grilled cuttlefish, Saigon beer, the smells, sounds and sights of Asia, the warm wind on our skin as we travelled through the countryside on mopeds, the smell of fish drying near China Beach (yes, that China Beach; the one where American GIs first heard the term “me love you long time�?), we knelt in reverence in front of ancient Buddhist temples and marvelled at how a family of five could somehow manage to squeeze onto one motorcycle.

We took it all in, with the impatience and hunger of people who know they are running out of time. Yet a month is still a month, and so we had the luxury of sitting down and reading, people-watching, suntanning, sipping iced Vietnamese coffee, starting up impromptu conversations with tuk-tuk drivers, taking it all in without necessarily needing to take a picture of everything.

Like the knowledge that remains after you’ve long forgotten the specifics of the education you’ve acquired, travel is the gift that keeps on giving, revealing moments, sensations, emotions and lessons long after your bags have been unpacked and life has taken up its familiar routine.

I fell in love with Cambodia; its people, its food, its humanity. Cambodians smile all the time. The minute you make eye contact, a warm inviting smile breaks out on their face and you can’t help but do the same. It’s one of life’s strange mysteries that so much death and destruction was allowed to survive here for so long. But Pol-Pot’s legacy and the murderous Khmer Rouge are in the past and the country is working hard to get back on its feet.

The number of tourists at Angkor Wat was absolutely obscene and, while I completely understand the reasons they were there, if I never see another obnoxiously loud, picture-taking, umbrella -hat wearing tour group, it will still be too soon.

Perched on top of Pnom Bakeng, one of the many amazing temples at Angkor, taking in the breathtaking sunset one evening, I heard so many cameras simultaneously click around me that I wondered if anyone was even LOOKING. I laughed, because, there we were, from all corners of the world, locked in our own private moment, seeking that unique experience, yet carbon copies of each other. “Same same, but different�?.

Merchants use that saying when they’re peddling their wares or when they’re showing you a room. There isn’t a souvenir stand in Asia that doesn’t sell a shirt with “Same same, but different�? on it.

As I sat there looking at them, snapping away, it dawned on me: our journey may not be unique, but it’s still uniquely our own. “Same same, but different�?. Much like life.