Goin' With It

I'll start by telling you I feel very, very happy and content right now. There is a sweet grin on my face. It is a perfect summer evening here.

I am wearing my awesome new flip flops (no reason to where anything else here, as it's hot and you often need to remove your shoes when entering homes / businesses, which I love), thai pants (so comfy), my favorite wife teaser (I thought 'beater' was too rough and my friend Rae's suggestion of 'pleaser', well, too soft), and a beautiful silver bracelet I bought myself two nights ago. In case you were wondering.

So much to my delight, I found some of the real Lao today, and also came to accept and embrace more of the farang Lao. Here's how it came to be.

I started my day by dealing with Next Generation business, and having a great conversation with my dear friend Liam Bowler, who was about to embark on a 4-week adventure of his own. I told him I was having another of my sort of existential crises on the road, like, "What the fuck am I doing here? Am I here to have fun? To test myself? Why do I constantly need to test myself? OK then am I here to hang out with cute acro-yogi body worker arial dancers and try to get them to like me? Shit I do enough of that at home! So what Bowler?! What???"

It actually felt great to vent some of this. And then Liam actually had a great point (so rare! just kidding!), which is that sometimes we seek context in order to rationalize and get away from the direct experience.

This point really landed with me. And I realized a bit more deeply what I've been realizing for a while now, that while some context is good, this constant need to understand and seek can be quite anxiety provoking. Especially since in recent months, I've come a long way in being able to relax and go with the flow and see where that leads. Needing to understand it all sometimes leads me back to a middle of turbulence.

So why am I here? I still don't know really. Most of this trip, that's been A-OK. Sometimes is sort of comes to a head, as it did today, and then, ahh, a release into just going with it, which often leads to good things, which today included coconut shakes and adventures by bike and playing with Lao kids and exploring a real local market and 2 beautiful temples at sunset, and then capping it off with a walk through town and a glass noodle buffalo meat (along with another coconut shake) at a beautiful tropical farang bar / restaurant. A sweet day and night!

The richness and ease of much of this day has also increased my curiosity about this country and my desire to explore it. There is a lot here, for sure. We'll see what I uncover.

Alright my friends,
much love to you wherever you are,
Roni

ps - There was a hidden agenda to my choice of buffalo meat tonight, and that is to justify the hamburger, most likely buffalo burger actually, I think I will need to eat sometime over the next few days. South East Asian food is awesome, but fuck I want a burger!