Home in a Teacup
MALAYSIA | Thursday, 15 May 2014 | Views [184] | Scholarship Entry
The first time I saw my mother take a cup from a hotel room and arrange our toothbrushes in it I thought she was crazy. “We’ll only be here for a few days,” I thought, “What’s the point?” Yet years later, I found myself doing the same thing half way around the world in Malaysia.
My fellow travellers and I were to spend the first of our three weeks studying abroad at the Mandarin Pacific Hotel in Kuala Lumpur’s Chinatown district. The accommodations were nothing like the brochure promised, thank goodness, for the last thing I needed more of was “Western luxury”. The carpets were damp with sweltering humidity, the slatted windows in the bathroom let the curry-scented air in every minute of the day and they served spicy noodles alongside barren cornflakes for breakfast. The delightful trifecta of Southeast Asian living.
I always struggled to imagine how my mother, who was an Air Force brat, could get used to living in places like Italy, Portugal and England every other year. I couldn’t imagine being comfortable in a place so foreign to me until I just… was.
As I dropped my watch, iPod and transit card into a teacup by my bed and my toothbrush, toothpaste and tweezers into a glass by the sink, I realized for the first time that anywhere you go can feel like home if you allow it to. I carried this notion with me from the urban hotel in K.L. to the rural hostel in Taman Negara to the charming bed and breakfast in Kuching to my dorm room back in suburban St. Charles, Missouri. Travelling changed my life.
Along the way I met countless people who do more with less. I saw other Westerners who have cast off their high maintenance lifestyles and expatriated permanently. And best of all I got to know backpackers who call the whole world their home. The thing that binds all of these people together is their shared emphasis on experience, the intangible force that relies on participation instead of consumption, that distinguishes traveller from tourist.
The tragedy of modern travel is that souvenirs and photographs are overemphasized as the living proof you “need” to prove that you have done and seen something magical. In my view, a true journey is one where you are the thing that is new.
{(“Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time.” -Hannah Arendt)}
Tags: 2014 Travel Writing Scholarship - Euro Roadtrip
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