A dreamer … you know … it’s a mind that looks over the edges of things.                    

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A cat protecting his Red Bull bottles in Pahurat in Chinatown, Bangkok

 — Mary O’Hara

A Dispatch from the Bangkok Airport:

In the fifth grade, my teacher Mrs. Reynolds handed us an aptitude test. We picked up our No. 2 pencils and darkened the bubbles according to what we liked best and liked least. We were 10. We were too young to laugh at the idiocy of questions like “Do you like the color green?” signifying clearly that you would grow up involved with money … or fresh-cut grass … or absinthe. Those lead-blackened bubbles were fed through the Scantron machine and arrived on the other side with the wisdom of a shaman. A shaman who really, really liked the business-end of America, that is. You like green? You should be a banker. Or, a farmer. Or … there’s a small chance you might become a delinquent poet with a tolerance for high-proof spirits, but rest-assured if you take that route, we will slow clap at your funeral.

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Macherey Village, 45 minutes from Siem Reap, Cambodia

My aptitude test in the fifth grade came back, and it said I should be a forest ranger. I remember thinking that it was bullshit. I didn’t want to stand in a forest. I hate ticks. And fires. And those lookout towers are really small and really high up.

Mosaic elephant sculpture at Xieng Thong Temple in Luang Prabang, Laos
Mosaic elephant sculpture at Xieng Thong Temple in Luang Prabang, Laos

If my teacher had simply asked, I would have told her I wanted to drive a boat down murky river tributaries, ducking pythons in the tree canopy and arriving at some village, just to the left of the middle of nowhere. The villagers would come running out with cups carved from coconuts, the bones in their noses jiggling with excitement, and we would all drink hallucinogenic tea and stamp our feet in the moonlight.

(Ok, at 10 I was probably not using the word “tributaries” or aware that hallucinogenic tea existed, but it adds a certain ‘jen ne sais wha?!’ to the mental image. I had definitely read Where the Wild Things Are way too many times.)

If that Scantron, had known with the fuck it was talking about, it should have read “Explorer.” It wasn’t allowed to say “explorer,” however, because by the mid 1980s, my most-suited profession had long since gone the way of the cowboy. No one was gonna pay a kid to grow up and wear cool hats and sleep out under the stars anymore. No one will hire you to roam with purpose. You can’t build a career out of finding stuff, because all the stuff has already been found.

A spoon from the Neolithic Era, Thailand (circa 800 BC) - on display at The Siam Hotel in Bangkok
A spoon from the Neolithic Era, Thailand (circa 800 BC) – on display at The Siam Hotel in Bangkok

I’ve come as close as I could possibly get with “travel writer,” and I drink enough absinthe to make Hemingway blink (it even occasionally makes my writing better), but somedays, I get sad that we know the planet is round, not flat, and there’s no real adventure like their used to be. Real adventure was when you could paddle too far and get sucked over the edge of reality’s waterfall. Exploring meant taking the risk that those people with bones in their noses might run at you … not with coconuts of LSD juice, but with poisonous blow darts and a Gary Busey gleam in their eyes.

Fisherman taking a smoke break in Macherey, Cambodia
Fisherman taking a smoke break in Macherey, Cambodia

It’s tough to have adventures when Google Maps can pinpoint your exact location, and your best friend can text you a picture of her Miller High Life from 4,000 miles away. I wish I’d been born when “Pirate” was a job choice, and the cubicle was six hundred years from being invented. And, yes, some days, I think the Earth was a better place when it was still flat.

Having a good day in Macherey, Cambodia
Having a good day in Macherey, Cambodia

This morning, my father took off at 5:15 a.m. for his flight back to America. I’m alone for the next 37 days, starting with Phnom Penh tonight. That sentence makes me happy because Phnom Penh might be one of the only Wild West towns really left in Southeast Asia. No lie, I saw a girl get her camera snatched in broad daylight in front of three policemen the last time I was here. The guy who took it didn’t even bother running as the police looked on, amused. I have 24 hours in this crazy-ass city, and I plan to make the most of them. I’m going to attempt to find some stuff no one has found yet. Attempt to resuscitate exploration.

Heading home from work on the Mekong River & Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia
Heading home from work on the Mekong River & Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia

Stay tuned for the photo evidence. Or, if you don’t hear from me for several days, assume I’m in a bathtub full of ice, mourning the loss of my left kidney and lamenting the irony of writing a blog about begging for real adventure.