Much has been said about solo travel, and how it needn’t be lonely and isolated. That you would meet people along the way, travellers and hosts alike. And so, while you may start out solo, this wouldn’t be the case for very long. This story is not about that. It is about a different way that solo travel turns out not to be solo.
The realisation etched itself slowly over my recent post-Blue Period years, and sharpened into relief when I returned from my birthday mission.
Contents
Teja’s birthday ambition
One year ago, I decided that on my next birthday I would be on Easter Island.
Like India, Easter Island had long been on my bucket list, the mystery of its moai and its faraway location a beacon to the little voyager deep inside me. It just wasn’t at the top, because it was far and difficult (i.e. expensive) to reach.
But I decided, at the end of 2016, that in 2017 I would flip my travel philosophy.
I would give mountains a chance, even though I’m usually a coastal creature. I would go to the destinations that I saved for ‘later’ because they were ‘too hard’. And I would find out what happens, if I switched my mind around like that.
But in order to do that, I must travel alone.
The discomfort – and allure – of solo travel
It was not very long ago that I first tried ‘real’ solo travel. It was in Tacloban.
As an introvert who also finds novel social interaction mentally taxing, it took a lot for me to get to that space. And, to be honest, I did not take to it immediately. So I took a break from solo travel.
By the next time I tried solo travel again, it was a pretty epic trip – an odyssey to Nepal and India. In between was, well, something in between.
But why did I not turn back for good after Tacloban, even though it was uncomfortable? Why did I make a second, and even more ambitious attempt, to travel solo?
The answer to that lies in a particular quirk of my personality.
I’m not an adrenaline junkie. I’m totally cool with my limitations. I mean, it would take far too much time and effort for me to be a mountaineer, for example, and I’m not interested to invest towards that.
Nor am I ‘addicted’ to travel. It isn’t the case that I am comfortable with the unknowns of solo travel, let alone crave it. I’d like to think that I’m not ‘addicted’ to anything. Like, addiction isn’t a thing to be proud of, whatever the thing you say you’re addicted to is.
Certainly the uncertainty of new social situations is not – and probably never will be – exhilarating to me.
Nor am I particularly motivated by the superficial advantages of picking up skills I don’t enjoy. I don’t care about looking cool, or about the approval of people.
But I’m even less comfortable with stagnation.
What this means is that I would not pick up, say, hardcore cycling and all its paraphernalia just to fit into someone else’s life.
But if I am tempted to chicken out on open sea snorkeling to see whale sharks just because I’m afraid to find out whether I could… It may take me a while, and I would always appreciate support, but ultimately I would do it. I have to pull the curtain aside and find out. I have to find out who I am, and can become.
And so, in a perverse sort of way, I’m not comfortable unless I feel the underlying discomfort of my evolution, because I know that the whole universe unfolds and is evolving too. It is the nature of things, to grow. It is unnatural, to become stagnant.
Maybe the Germans have a word for this complicated existential need. Surely it would be them, if anyone?
The Bugis princess
“So how is the Bugis princess, returned from around the world?”
So my mother greeted me, when I came home from my recent Netherlands-Chile-Australia journey. She was referring to our seafaring ancestry. Most of mine came from her side, though my father’s side also has a substantial Bugis line. And while hers is not precisely a royal line, it wasn’t entirely far off the mark.
Perhaps this heritage explains my aversion to stagnation.
After all, an archipelagic nation that does not explore runs the risk of being trapped on ever more crowded land.
The inconvenient child
This quirk to my personality is like the knot in an otherwise even-grained cut of wood.
It makes me sporadically take inconvenient choices, including sometimes ‘sabotaging’ my own apparently successful trajectory. Just because things were feeling too predictable and safe.
When prevented, and forced towards achievements that are meaningless to me, I become sullen and unhappy – much like a caged tiger.
I know it makes me a frustrating child to have. It makes me only ‘almost’ the pride of the nation. I could have compared so well to other daughters! I might have been a ‘high flyer’!
Only, I could not confine myself into those boxes. I keep veering sideways when I could have kept going up.
To the horizon, instead of the mountain peak.
My contrarian ways
It is this trait that drove me to specialise in environmental studies when I’m ‘supposed’ to have gone for medicine, like a good Asian child.
This, that made me suddenly and completely out of character, sign up for the navy reserves.
Also this, that made me choose Wales for my advanced degree – precisely because Bangor didn’t have a large expat Malaysian community.
It was also this that made me take the gamble of a cross-cultural marriage.
And through all my inconvenient choices, my mother tried to soften all the risks and the dangers – to protect me from hardship.
Except… that’s not how growth works. So my need for independence clashed often with her need for security.
A line of fierce women
If I am ‘almost’ a high achiever, my mother actually is.
She is from the first post-independence generation of my country, educated in the optimism of the ’70s to be part of the vanguard of professionals for a hopeful new nation.
She didn’t disappoint.
As a woman, she logged many national firsts and personal over-and-above contributions – but I have to stop short of giving details. Suffice to say that she more than meets the fevered dreams of your average feminist, but without being resented by anyone for it.
And she did this from a starting point of great hardship. War was a great leveller of the fortunes of families.
Her mother before her was also extraordinary – teacher, activist, humanitarian, experimenter of ideas, early adopter of technologies, and probable spy (ok that last bit is just a family joke). And her mother before that as well.
My female line is peopled with incredible women of knowledge, diplomacy, and insight – both worldly and occult.
And one extraordinary man.
I can’t mention all this about my mother, without also noting my father.
My mother in university was awesome. She was fearsomely intelligent, and dominantly outspoken. Besides being a top student, she was also a competition-winning songbird.
My dad was… not.
Yet, recognising all of this, he was nonetheless not at all intimidated. And he did the most baffling thing. He decided that my mother was exactly the one for him. Even though – or precisely because – she was so awesome that she might even overshadow him in life.
It’s unfathomable.
Disclaimer.
Now I’m not saying guys don’t choose cool, awesome women.
But one that might eclipse him? And then afterwards take no action whatsoever to restrict her to make sure that this doesn’t happen? Now, that takes a special kind of man.
My mother couldn’t even be paraded as a trophy. She is famously not into adornments and self-beautification.
But my father was not choosing a decorative queen like a human king. He chose a powerful one like a chess King.
It’s not to say that my father doesn’t have other merits. But if I were to choose his most valuable trait, it would be this. Because it is the rarest trait in men, of any race. This complete independence from the approval and admiration of other men.
And I owe my existence to it! Because by the time my mother was of marrying age, arranged marriages had fallen out of vogue! (I cannot knock the culture of arranged marriages too much. Given the high occurrence of unusual women in my line, I am certain it is the main reason that my mother even exists in the first place. I do not have a maternal line of unusual men.)
Although… on the other hand, having a father like him probably ruined me for the age I’m alive in.
Solo travel: On the wind and wave
Solo travel is different than other travel in that you are forced to change your mode outwards. You must reach out and depend on the hospitality of the host nation. You face uncertainties and risks mainly with only your own resources.
So I knew that my solo travel this year was especially hard on my mother. Precisely because it is not the typical way that Asians travel – especially Asian females.
I also knew from other female travel bloggers that the concern is not limited to me, or Asians. Loved ones left behind are often shrouded with insecurity. Rejection is frequently reported – which likely stems from the fear of losing one’s child as she moves away, and maybe changes from someone they felt they knew.
People seem to think that there are only two options: stubbornly staying still and push away those who wouldn’t stay; or be resigned that you will probably lose everyone anyway, and therefore should stay for no one.
What a lack of imagination and daring.
If we have no choice but to face a time of high winds, then make a sail – or a wind turbine.
And if change disrupts the tick tock of an old routine, then set it to music and – dance.
If you would only dance together – then you won’t lose each other.
The unfilial filial child
And this brings me back to my homecoming, and the epiphany that came upon me at the waning of 2017.
The conventional mindset of my people, especially given the blessing of having great and eminent parents, is that I ought to be grateful. This should be expressed through filial obedience, and removing as much worry and discomfort from them as possible.
So, since my independence and need for travel and growth was hard on my mother, the right thing to do was to leave such notions behind.
I did not.
Instead, I moved out from my parents’ home, and I followed the flow of the universe out into the world. And I began changing, absorbing – growing. Understanding people.
The evolving Asian parent
But gradually, I noticed that I began to need to ask beforehand if my parents were home, if I wished to visit. My parents may be away – perhaps also travelling.
My mother relaxed more after I returned perfectly intact from India. She reads my blog and perhaps it helps. My dad follows me on Facebook and shows her my pictures, from when I find wifi on my journeys.
She began to mention more people who did or knew of similar things as the things I’m trying, and fewer travel tales with horrifying ends. Her general approach grew more measured, rather than defaulted to control.
Surprisingly, it appears that my demand for independence gave her independence as well.
Unexpectedly, it seems to be a good push to the task they already knew they had to do: be the first Malay generation to figure out a later-life identity, in this age of longer lifespans. (Traditionally, the post-retirement life in my country is to lie back and bask at the sight of one’s progeny. ‘Old age’ consists of being resigned to a slow, inactive, often sickly wait for the end.)
It turned out, that my solo travels didn’t test me alone. Others were forced to change too.
2018 Solo travel and beyond
It is just as well that this is the case.
It is very likely I would continue to be inconvenient. I would probably never give my poor parents the ability to rest on their laurels, free from the discomfort of uncertainty.
But on the other hand, it means never to be mired in complacency either.
Each of the past couple years, I grew into the neglected spaces of my self at a speed I can scarcely fathom. The universe brings me to new things and situations, and forces me into a faster and more varied succession of choices.
I do not know which way I would go in the space of the next year.
It is a space of growth and exploration. It is an unusual, eccentric life for which answers must be derived from first principles. By definition I am forced to become more comfortable with the possibility of making an error.
Not easy for someone who hates getting it wrong, and who also – secretly – just wants to rest and enjoy a milestone stage for a while.
And here is the other solo travel epiphany.
My mother enjoys feeling needed. I know she took it hard when I demonstrated that I could live on my own – because it implied that I did not need her for that anymore.
But the thing is, any average woman can keep house and make meals, and deal with the routine responsibilities and chores of settled modern life. An extraordinary person is wasted on a life that just repeats the standard solutions to generic problems.
Here’s the thing. My parents – despite appearances (possibly a form of camouflage) – are not average. The irony is, only by being released to venture into an uncharted, bespoke life, would I have the opportunity to truly need my unusual mother.
But mama, unfortunately this means, you too, will always have to bear the discomfort of evolution.
What were your solo travel epiphanies? How have your parents reacted to your solo travels?
Very interesting that your solo travels caused such a chain reaction within your family. My family certainly haven’t understood why I do what I do but I can see how I’ve influenced my siblings who are going out in to the world much earlier than I ever did.
Great writing and perspective!
Perhaps they will come to understand as they read your writings :)
I thought the bit about your parents reactions and their changes in relation to your solo travel was pretty interesting and not something people usually talk about. I also feel it might be something a bit more Asian as I’ve found other cultures have quite different parent-child relations, but I kinda resonated with this (hello from across the causeway!) :)
Hello neighbour!
Yes, you’re right. I don’t think this context is familiar to, say, Europeans. That being said, I’ve heard similar accounts (complaints?) from female American bloggers though!
It’s the interconnectedness between people in typically Asian societies, perhaps. You don’t change without it causing change in the people you’re connected to, which may be less apparent in more distant individualist communities. I think diversity in story-telling is important, to allow these different contexts to be heard.