Awakening Wanderlust: Why Would I Ever Return to London?
Awakening Wanderlust: Why Would I Ever Return to London?
The trek up the Doi Suthep mountain stirred the long-forgotten wanderlust within me.
I thought it was Halloween and only realised later that evening that it was the next day due to Ken taking the mick out of me.
‘LOL SHUT UP YOU THOUGHT HALLOWEEN WAS ON THE 30TH!’ His text said. I laughed out loud. He was just so cute sometimes.
Ellie and I had planned to hang out that evening to check out all the Halloween events but it suddenly started showering in the afternoon - it being the tail end of the monsoon season - and she eventually flaked. I ran to the nearest shelter, a fancy restaurant attached to an even fancier hotel. The waiter indicated for me to come inside and I did so a little reluctantly. I was hungry but did not want to buy anything from there. He offered me the menu and the spicy coconut chicken soup caught my eye. The next thing I knew, I was sitting at a table and the soup was being bought to me in a beautiful blue clay pot.
Ellie’s flakiness motivated me to be assertive with meet ups. The Hostelworld app had a group chat feature. Many people joined and asked if anyone wanted to do activities with them but it seemed like nothing was materialising. Someone called Mia responded to my post about doing the monkey trail hike. I gave her my number and told her to whatsapp me. If she was serious, she would. She did. We arranged to have breakfast the next morning before setting off. Another woman called Sema also said she was interested. I hesitated for a second - it was starting to feel like something I had to manage - but then decided to give her my number too.
Mia was around my height, average build with long, dark hair. She was from Long Island but had lived in New York for the past decade. We met up at the Salad Concept, a breakfast place on the main road I had passed the day before. The menu was mouthwatering and I was keen to try the smoked salmon.
Mia immediately started sharing her experience with a guy she had met on Bumble and had had a travel romance with. It was an intense ten days which had turned sour.
‘He’s very independent and has been travelling for years,’ she told me. ‘But he had an attitude of holier-than-thou because he had a rough upbringing and established himself as a spiritual and digital nomad for the last fifteen years.’
I appreciated her honesty and vulnerability. ‘Let’s see his profile,’ I said curiously.
An average looking Caucasian guy with dark hair. He looked familiar.
‘I think I matched with him…’ I said. ‘Wait, let me check.’
‘You probably have,’ she replied as I swiped through my phone.
I had indeed matched with him last night. The pickings were slim; he was a writer which implied he may have been good at conversing and convinced me to swipe right. I had asked him if he wanted to meet up for a drink. This year, I was being assertive with men. No small talk. Back home in London, it was, ‘hey, how’s it going? Let’s do a quick video call’ so I could see if I wanted to spend time, money and energy on meeting that person physically. Here, it was, ‘let’s meet for a drink’ because time was often short and relationships even more transient.
‘Hello Bangali girl…’ began his response. I didn’t read the rest. I immediately unmatched.
‘Thank you,’ said Mia.
‘No, thank you,’ I replied. ‘You’ve just saved me from a narcissist.’
Despite me unmatching the guy, there was a small part of me that regretted it because he had offered Mia what I (and many other women) fantasised about - an attractive, charismatic guy (although this guy looked beige) with a scooter who knew the land and could take me places I would have a hard time accessing, mingled with romance. What an adventure!
Mia and I made our way back to my hostel to meet Sema, a fellow Londoner doing a PhD in something related to the human nose. We shared a taxi to the bottom of the Doi Suthep mountain. At the top sat the Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, a large, beautiful Bhuddist temple which offered a gorgeous view of Chiang Mai and the lush green land around it. As I looked out from the viewpoint, something stirred deep within me - something I had not felt in years. A hint of delicious, exciting wanderlust.
Working as a full-time nature journalist for four-and-a-half years had been wonderful - it was the best job I had ever had. I got to research and write about our planet - something I was deeply interested in and the stories I wrote were authentic, meaningful and important. I knew many journalists would have give an arm and a leg to have been in my position. However, at the same time, the job and the lifestyle took something away from me too. I got sucked into the rat race without realising it. I grew accustomed to working 9-5 and receiving a regular paycheck at the end of each month. And somewhere along the line, I became dependent on this lifestyle. I started feeling trapped - I couldn’t leave this security even though I was unhappy with the salary and the lack of opportunities to progress. The cost-of-living crisis along with coming off the antidepressants while solo-travelling in Turkey magnified this dependency tenfold. I lost my confidence and I felt unsafe. Every cell in my body wanted me to run away from the UK but at the same time, I was terrified of doing so. The paradox was excruciating. It took a year and a half to rebuild myself and very slowly gain the confidence to leap into the unknown again.
And for the first time since starting my solo travel, I felt good. I felt like I could do this; I could get lost in Asia. Ken became a distant memory. He was the only thing holding me back to London anyway. I realised I had comfortably severed my ties with my friends and family - I loved them but I didn’t need to be in close proximity to them.
Although I had spent three months solo-travelling around Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore six years ago and three months in Turkey last year, London had had its claws in me the whole time - the pinpoint tips held onto the threads of my clothes, my hair. I wanted to cut ties with the UK but something about leaving the capital I had grown up in made me feel like I was leaving behind something that was better than everything else. Deep down, I thought London was the ‘right’ or ‘normal’ way of living because it’s what I was used to and despite all the criticisms I made about the capital, the lifestyle was deeply ingrained me.
The ways of life I found outside of the UK was something that could only ever be temporary, like a holiday. Waking up and eating fresh, exotic fruits for breakfast in bright sun, being surrounded by the musicality of a southeast Asian language, casually driving a scooter along rice fields to meet a friend - these things were not common, everyday occurrences. These things only happened on short trips in far flung countries that you explored briefly before returning to miserable, grey London where you carried on with your mundane life which you jazzed up with expensive nights out where you spent the same amount of money travelling to the other side of the city as you would on three completely different mouthwatering meals in Thailand cooked by local families.
Over the next few days, Mia, Sema and I met up for various meals and drinks. Coincidentally, they both wanted to go to Pai - a bohemian village nestled in the mountains - and my next destination - around the same time I did. We decided to travel together and share a guesthouse. This made me happy. I had come across people who had met each other along the way and decided to travel a part of their journey together but this had never really happened for me. In Malaysia, I did meet three Dutch girls and travelled with them from Kuala Tahan to Malacca but I felt conscious of the fact that they were travelling together as friends and I was the solo-traveller from Britain who they may have invited out of politeness. It was probably more my own social anxiety that established that perspective but that was my experience at the time. This time round, the friendship and travel plan happened organically.
My last night in Chiang Mai had me feeling a little sad. The city had grown on me and I could see why people came here and never left. But I saw the sadness as a positive thing - it meant I had something good. Chiang Mai was a city I could return to and it was a privilege to have something like that. As much as I had loved Malaysia and Bali, there wasn’t a place there that called me back.
I decided to have dinner at Sushi Umai, a little sushi place round the corner from my hostel. Mia and I had come across this place the night before. She was hesitant to eat there as she wasn’t a fan of fish so we ended up eating at a ramen place. I had always thought of ramen as a poor university students meal choice - images of ramen noodle in a plastic packet with a sachet of chicken flavoured powder came to mind. But I realised that was only one end of the ramen spectrum. On the other end, it was an exciting dish made of whole eggs, chicken pieces, seaweed and much more.
‘You’ve just introduced me to the real world of ramen,’ I said to Mia.
‘You’re welcome,’ she replied with a smile.
Sushi Umai place was small and cosy, pleasantly busy with an open kitchen. The waitress sat me at the bar which gave me the perfect view of the chefs making sushi.
Salmon. That’s what I wanted. I ordered raw salmon slices, a spicy salmon salad with garlic fried rice. When the dishes arrived, I quickly realised I had over ordered - they were larger than what they had looked like in the photos. I snapped some pictures, finished off the first dish which was delicious, started on the second but couldn’t get beyond a couple of chunks, so sent the images to Ken.
‘Were you really hungry?’ he asked.
‘Had an appetite but didn’t realise the portions were gonna be so big. The bowls are small but they can fit a lot.’
‘Haha that’s fair and unfortunate. Can’t really doggy bag it either.’
‘I think I could but I’m leaving tomorrow so couldn’t really eat it. But that first dish, the salmon was 😋 The dressing was a little sour and sharp and very refreshing.’
We went back and forth for a while and I managed to eat a slice of salmon from the salad. I had never wasted salmon before and was determined not to start now.
‘What are you having for lunch?’ I asked.
‘I might have some soup cos it’s kinda cold here. We’ve got a storm incoming today!’
‘Aw cute, what kind of soup? Chicken and mushroom sounds really yummy to me right now. Yeah I heard about the storm, wish I could teleport so I could snuggle up with you for that.’
A heart emoticon.
‘If you could have any superpower, what would it be?’ I asked. ‘Dibs on teleportation!’
‘Maybe read minds or straight up fly?’
‘You’d go crazy if you read minds. You’d hear things you wish you never did.’
‘Haha ok hopefully with an on and off switch.’
‘Flying is cool but it doesn’t beat teleportation.’
‘I knooow 😥 you dibbed it first. I thought about flying/moving really fast but that’s like a poor man’s teleportation lol.’
‘Better than being a puny human with no powers.’
Another slice of salmon. I was doing pretty good.
‘How do you feel about us keeping in touch?’ I asked. ‘Because I know it’s not really what you wanted at first and I’m wondering if you’re having second thoughts.’
After our first date, Ken had sent me a long text complimenting me and then saying he didn’t want to meet again. He didn’t want to get attached as I was leaving and he didn’t believe in long distance relationships. Although he said he was interested in me romantically, it felt like a huge rejection and it hurt. A few days later, I decided to tell him what I had been thinking all along but had failed to communicate. I asked him to keep in touch as a friend, date other people if the opportunity presented itself, potentially come out to visit me for a couple of weeks and if we were both single by the time I returned to London, we would date. He agreed. I said I wanted to see him a final time before I left but wouldn’t ask him. And then on the last day, I caved and asked him anyway. And I was glad I did because he said yes and it was wonderful.
‘Lol love how direct you are,’ he replied.
‘I sort of feel like I enticed you and now you’re kind of trapped? Because we have a connection so it’s not like we can just say ‘bye’ to each other.’
A pause.
‘It’s okay, you can answer me later,’ I quickly added.
‘Yeah… I’m still not a fan of long distance but I think right now it’s going well? It’s good to know you’re not gone for like a year or something.’
A small hesitation passed through me. Although I had always said I was travelling for three to six months, during my first night, I had told Ken I was thinking of cutting my trip short from three months to six weeks. But that was the homesickness in me talking. The hike to Doi Suthep had woken the wanderlust in me and I knew I was going to be travelling for three months minimum, most likely six, possibly longer. I didn’t know how to tell him this.
‘I’m just taking it a day at a time for now?’ he continued. ‘Although I won’t lie and say I haven’t thought about how things might be when you do get back.’
‘We’d date like a normal couple?’
‘Yeah and how I should pick up driving 😂 so we could do small getaways.’
‘That sounds sweet. I would love that.’
I popped another salmon in my mouth. Three down, another six to go.
I left Sushi Umai feeling really good. The whole experience was gorgeous - sitting at the bar, the small, cosy space, the ambience, the tasty food, seeing the chefs make the sushi, talking with Ken and managing to finish all the salmon which was a win.
Tomorrow, Mia and Sema were going to come to my hostel and we’d go to Pai, a place I had been excited about exploring for many weeks. I felt like I had finally fallen into the solo-travel adventure.