Friends Along the Way

The tuk-tuks in Laos are the prettiest I have seen so far

It is worth a post to talk about the people we’ve met on our travels. As a couple, it isn’t always easy to strike up conversations with strangers traveling with friends or on their own, but when we did, we have met some pretty interesting and great people.

The unspoken agreement for travelers on the road seems to be conversation first, names maybe later. We all know that our paths will cross but briefly, and we will have lots in common for that short period of time, but afterwards, mostly we go our separate ways and won’t see each other again. And that is totally how it is supposed to be.

In India, when I was sick in bed, Alex on his own met many people in our hotel and on his solo tour to the Monkey Temple. Of the people he met, there was a British couple freshly out of school, whom we ran into again later in Udaipur, and we traded advice on where to eat and what to do in Udaipur – helpful advice that led me to the awesome cooking class.

In Jaipur, I also struck up a conversation with a French couple while using the public computers in our hotel, and it was they who helped me pick out our apartment in Paris for September.

In India, we also had the fortune to meet up with Tracy, Mohit, and Alex’s high school friend Anu, all of whom shared their time generously with us, showing us the country from a local lens that we would’ve otherwise missed.

In Cambodia, we bonded with an American couple on the same trip as us from Bangkok, and ended up sharing everything from tuk-tuks to mangoes and lychees on the side of the road, making our journey much more full of colour (and our dinner orders much more varied than with just two people)!

In Vietnam, we spent a full day on a boat with three Londoners originally from very different parts of the world, and heard fantastic stories on the places they’ve seen. We learned about different ways of traveling, such as the concept of couch-surfing, now in a much more regulated but still fun environment.

The stories we’ve heard from travelers have also been amazing. From people celebrating graduation, to people taking an unofficial year off school (and going back to write their exams in the hopes that they pass and continue on into the next year anyway!), to ex-stockbrokers who are well-versed in Cambodia currency fluctuations, to ex-pat hotel managers with homes on different continents, everyone has a tale worth telling and worth listening to. It is something that never gets old, and helps the flow of conversation along as we travel on.

I think the friends along the way is one of the things I will miss the most about traveling life once we are settled again. There just doesn’t seem to be a better way to run into such a diverse population with unique stories to share, and for that, I am glad we have chosen this path.