Tag Archives: Vietnam

My Journey

“Those that ask the question will never understand the answer. Those that understand the answer will never ask the question.”

I am still not fully satisfied.

Why is it that I can’t be content with a 9-5, with good friends, good food, a great family, an income. Why do I want to suffer? Why do I crave mud, sweat and tears above all else? Why do I want to feel hardship? Why do I think this way when so many others don’t?

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This constant search for adrenaline, this search for freedom is exhausting. Nothing I do blots out this scalding desire to be more, to do something reckless, scary… something epic. I don’t have a concrete plan, I don’t have any money. But I don’t think I ever will. I am 23, I have no commitments, no offers of jobs or internships, no credit card debts, no loans, no boyfriend, no kids. Therefore I have no excuse. No reason to be doing nothing. Technically I am free, yet I have never felt free, all I hear are rules, rules rules, how to act, how to dress,… so much bullshit. This is why I need an adventure.

I know I’m not alone, others like me are out there, others that get it. Sir Ranulph Fiennes once said: “Those that ask the question will never understand the answer. Those that understand the answer will never ask the question.” That is it. That’s the best explanation I’ve ever gotten as to why I am this way, why I live the way I live. It can’t be explained in words.

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My life is by no means boring. I spent Christmas abroad in a country that doesn’t celebrate Christmas. I ate a curry for Christmas dinner and skyped my family while they opened their presents and narrated the humdrum of goings on, of who got what. I rang in the New Year with three brilliant Canadians in Hanoi. The next day I boarded a plane to the Philippines for my cousins wedding.

I stayed in a four and a half star, gem of a resort with its own private beach, two pools, an all you can eat breakfast buffet but all I felt was eerily concious of the people who are living mere yards away on the breadline in galvanised sheds with dirt floors. And they were the most polite and kind people I have ever met. I was uncomfortable, I felt guilty as I gorged myself. This is not me, this is not who I am. I like lying on the ground when I’ve eating too much, sitting on the edges of pavements, wearing out a pair of boots so much that my mam has to throw them out on the sly, eating seven bowls of cereal in a day so i won’t have to buy food.

But I got to see the grown ups, the Irish, my brilliant family. Some who I never felt quite in sync with before to discover a common interest; a bid for the Seven Summits, a recklessness to backflip off a banana boat, to rent jet ski’s, to parasail…A family all hailing from rural Ireland, flying in from their adopted homes in New Zealand, Australia, Doha, and London to celebrate the unification of two family’s and two cultures, the Filipinos and the Irish. Seeing my Mammy and my auntie Ann after months. The two of them halves of a whole, black and white, providing comfort and a good kick up the arse when required. Snorkelling, kayaking, jet skiing, hobie cat sailing in the luke warm waters of the South China Sea. Finally letting myself relax and be content to laze away a day or two on the beach, drinking and stuffing my face.

But it was a temporary respite from my ever restless consciousness, it came to an end and I had to return to Vietnam upset, tired of flights and layovers and crappy buses. So I handed in my notice, just so as I could feel like I was in motion, like I was making progress and I began the countdown.

Four weeks until the Lunar New Year and Cambodia.

Eight weeks until Da comes and the pedalling begins.

Thirteen weeks until the cycle ends and then who knows what…

It’s all figured out until April 17th, the date Da fly’s home. After that I have no further plans, no nuggets of knowledge or ideas, no money, no return flight, nada. And it really is a scary feeling.

I’ve always had some vague, fuzzy idea of the next step but this time the horizon is blank, scarily blank. I chose a year of teaching abroad to put off the inevitable decision. I thought within a year of bought time, surely I will have figured it out by then… but maybe not knowing the next step, what I will do or where I will be a week from now or even a day from now is the key, that is after all the very essence of adventure, and that is exactly what I keep saying that I am seeking.

I leave you with an extract from an article by journalist George Monbiot, something I reread every now and then when my resolves are starting to sway and I’m tempted to pack it all in and go home.”When faced with the choice between engaging with reality or engaging with what Erich Fromm calls the “necrophiliac” world of wealth and power, choose life, whatever the apparent costs may be. Your peers might at first look down on you: poor Nina, she’s twenty-six and she still doesn’t own a car. But those who have put wealth and power above life are living in the world of death, in which the living put their tombstones – their framed certificates signifying acceptance to that world – on their walls. Remember that even the editor of the Times, for all his income and prestige, is still a functionary, who must still take orders from his boss. He has less freedom than we do, and being the editor of the Times is as good as it gets.” (From: http://www.monbiot.com/career-advice/)

Just think about it.

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Adventure, My Journey

An Ode to Da

When I was born and you held me in your arms, you just thirty one years old then, did it cross your mind that one day we would be sitting on opposite sides of the world emailing each other logistics, moulding out plans for an adventure? I can picture you now sitting in your study on the battered PC in the backarse of Ireland, a V of a frown etched between your brow, typing painfully slow, one letter at a time. Me, thousands of miles away, lying on my bed scratching my insect bites typing a reply on my laptop, somewhere lost in Vietnam.

All those years, all those abstract ideas flickering to life in our minds but fading out before they really got a chance to catch fire. But here we are finally, me twenty three, you fifty four, and finally we have committed. It’s going to be so tough, you are going to drive me nuts trying to over plan everything, fretting about the gear and the bikes, and you will get frustrated with me, with my slow pace, when I moan that my body aches, and when I want to wild camp, or befriend the rabbis ridden dogs…  but holy shit what an adventure it will be!

How lucky am I?

Who has the time nowadays to even while away an afternoon talking with their Da, laughing with him, telling him about their lives, asking advice, sharing funny stories… just the two of them?

Who gets to do that?

Now, we have four whole weeks in front of us, just us two.

Did you ever think, I’ve got three daughters and no sons perhaps all is lost?

Did you ever think, when I was six sitting on the stairs in the middle of the night in hysterics because I couldn’t sleep in my own bed, that one day we would be considering doing this?

Or did you think when I was seventeen when you were carrying me home paralytic drunk from the Meadowlands after Ciara’s eighteenth that we would be undertaking something along these lines?

We’ve come a long way from playing catch on the bales of hay in the back field, from shooting hoops on the tarmac outside the house, from summer evenings spent whacking tennis balls back and forth in the golf links, from coaching my soccer and football teams, from walking Rascal in the long grass in the woods across the road, from running laps of the GAA pitch to train for triathlons, from bodyboarding alongside me while I tried to surf in the baltic winter swell off the shores of Achill Island. Sport has always been our thing. Sport has always brought us together.

And now, I get to quit my job. I get to throw all my clothes, make up and hoarded trinkets in the bin. And I get to board a bus to Hanoi to meet my Daddy after not seeing him for seven months and cycle the length of Vietnam with him.

And already I know it will fluctuate between moments of pure brilliance that we will never forget and moments of horror when we will question what the hell we signed up for, but regardless I must repeat… holy shit what an adventure it will be!

“Every day, life tempts and teases us to settle for mediocrity.” – Sophie Radcliffe, Adventurer.

But I will continue to resist and I will continue to defy.

Because I am your daughter, and that’s how you raised me to be.

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Adventure, My Journey

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

A train of thought… a stream of consciousness…

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I packed my bag and moved to Vietnam.

Everyone said how brave I was, moving to Vietnam alone.

Hear what she’s doing now. Wild.

But this wasn’t bravery.

This was just another stepping stone in the big plan. The plan to test myself little by little to see my capabilities, to see if I was cut out to do a real expedition.

But here I am, not three weeks in and I couldn’t be more comfortable. Too comfortable. It was all too easy, people were too nice, too helpful. I thought the world was supposed to be scary. But already, here I am, stuck in another routine, just a different backdrop.

Yes, it’s a world away from home, cracked tarmac, pressing heat, scooters everywhere in place of cars, noodles and rice instead of potatoes and pasta, markets on the side of the roads instead of in shops.

Everyone stopping to stare at the blonde haired, white girl walking amongst them.

Definitely a certain rustic beauty to the poverty.

But it was way too easy to find my place amongst them, to settle.

That’s not what I wanted.

I wanted hardship.

I wanted sweat, tears, and failure.

I wanted laughter and triumph against all odds.

I wanted an Epic.

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But now I’ve glimpsed real hardship, in the lives that most live here and all I feel is selfish, so selfish for always wanting more, when what I have is already pretty great.

Yet, in poverty it seems they have found what I seek.

With poverty it seems there comes a certain freedom. People are happier, freer then those of us from the western world. They have nothing; a whole family squashed together in a tiny room with no panes in their windows, their bikes and animals lying in the same room as their bed and kitchen, no fan or air conditioning to cool them in the relentless heat. Yet all they have, they share, they give all they can to others, to me, the ‘rich’ foreigner.

It would appear that I have everything they would want/need, yet I am not as happy, not as free as them. I am restless, yearning to see a change in the world, to see a change in myself. I thought my life was difficult, but it’s all relative. My life is not difficult, not by comparisons.

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I think my desire for adventure is connected with money and trappings of it. If I have nothing and all my worries day to day are not of how bad my skin is, how fat my thighs are, or how people perceive me. Adventure is when all of that fades into the background, into insignificance and the worries are instead focused on survival. The days spent pushing your body, mind and soul to its limit, seeing what you are capable of, seeing the world as it really is, not the tourist flashy version, but the real world.

I am tired of being restless.

I’ve always known what I want to do, I’ve just always been afraid to go ahead and do it.

Perhaps I am finally ready to step it up a gear or two, to say fuck the stepping stones and throw caution to the wind.

I am already nervous of the decision I have yet to make, of the not yet fully formed  idea in my mind. But it is there. It’s always been there. Growing stronger each passing day.  I will commit to doing something or forever will I be exiled  to this incomplete state of yearning, of always aching for more, of always failing to live in the moment.

When will my soul finally settle?

I’ve known the answer for quite a while. I just never had that extra push that it takes to commit and initiate the process.

Maybe moving here was too easy, but perhaps it was exactly what I needed to do to get the wheels in motion, to make me take that first and hardest of steps.

I know now I have to do an expedition/ a big adventure or forever I will live with a regret weighing on my shoulders.

Now…”Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver, The Summer Day.

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