Great Civilizations

I watch the man discreetly as he’s sat on a seat across the tram. A newspaper lies folded neatly in his lap, where his bony, khaki-clad knees meet like two knuckles in greeting. He stares into the air, not focusing on anything particular. He doesn’t look like most people in crowded places – who are aware they might be watched. I imagine he imagines he isn’t worth watching, which is why I can’t help but to do so.

A pair of glasses lie tucked away in his breast pocket, glimmering occasionally as the tram shakes down the tracks, and the light of the setting sun squeezing between the passing buildings and people on the tram just so for it to reach him.

His checkered business shirt is buttoned all the way save the top button, where the fabric hugs his slender throat. If the last button hadn’t constricted his breathing I’m sure also that would be buttoned up.

I imagine him in his office cubicle, strangling his frustrations in silence as his hairline recedes. As the sun dries up he clocks out and catches the tram home, an electrical device in search of a socket.

Suddenly, I come to think of the Colorado River, rushing through deep canyons in wild pursuit of the ocean. If the width of a river is any indication of the force passing through it, his neck is but a creek.

Great civilizations were never built on the banks of creeks.

Dengue, Dengue

“Eat something,” he commanded. His lips were a firm line.

“No thank you, I’m not hungry,” I said, with a meek smile, hoping to seem as if I knew what was best for me. I was in a hospital bed in Cambodia, a 20-year-old white girl scared and alone in a place with no room for self-pity.
“Eat something,” he repeated, louder – his narrow eyes widening behind his glasses. I was glad the old Cambodian man in the bed opposite was sleeping. He slept most of the day due to nights spent with violent coughing fits sounding as if his lungs were trying to squeeze through his windpipe. Following five or six coughs, he would spit in a tin bucket. An American patient said he believed the man suffered from tuberculosis. When I arrived, he was relieved to see another English speaker, but I had very little energy for speaking. I don’t think he liked me much, and I didn’t blame him – I didn’t like myself with dengue either. I could only afford short sentences and nods, and his attempts at communicating died quickly.
“Where are you from?”
“Norway.”
“Travelled for long?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got salmonella, what are you in for?”
“Dengue fever.”
He left sometime while I was sleeping.

“Okay,” I said to the doctor, defeated. “Noodles.”
I hadn’t been eating much for a while. It was as if my stomach had fallen asleep and didn’t speak to my brain anymore. It never told me it was empty – that I needed food. I’d later learn that it was caused by an E.coli blood infection. I suppose bad news travel in pairs. Bones began showing, starting at my hip, then my shoulders, lastly my ribs.

By extreme misfortune, it was my second hospitalization caused by dengue fever in my six months of traveling, and with the little English the doctors knew, they assured me it could be fatal. They said the second round was bad news. Blood could start to wander in places it shouldn’t. Once I told my parents of my situation, my dad packed his bags – disregarding any protests as he had whenever I had been overtired as a child. I was mortified that he had to save me from my own adventure, yet relieved for feeling less alone.

“Is not food,” he said, but still jotted something on his clipboard. I shifted in my bed, and felt the needle move beneath my skin. I didn’t know it was procedure to insert drips at the crook of the arm, nor pinning it down using bulky layers of sports tape. At least I’d never seen it done on Grey’s Anatomy – which was as far as my experience with hospitals went. Like so many things, this was done a little different here. At the slightest movement, the needle would dance, toying with the elasticity of my vein.  I grimaced, but knew there was no sympathy found in this building.

The room was white and bare, and the windows were frosted and barred – only allowing for the illusion of daylight. Aside from the man with the cough and me, the rest of the beds were empty. I doubted that there was a lack of sick people – only a lack of wealthy, sick people. With a long fingernail, the doctor tapped the suspended bag of antibiotics above me. The tube connecting it to my arm stirred briefly. I knew from my first round of dengue that antibiotics had no part in the treatment, but my respect for white lab coats and bespectacled stares was crippling.

At the previous Cambodian clinic, I had attempted to learn what medicine they gave me.
“What is this?” I gestured towards the needle they prepared.
“Yes. No. Yes. No. Medicine. Injection,” they said, and nodded once before they inserted the needle into my arm, the medicine burning and bulging as it went through. I cried from the pain and for feeling so helpless. They giggled at my tears, instructing me to massage along the blood flow to relieve pain. Any preconceived notions of being independent and world-savvy were scattered and hiding – remaining was a frail, bony thing in a bed across the world at Christmas, wanting nothing but to snap her fingers and sit beside the tree at home. This time around, grateful they didn’t inject me with fire, I objected to little.

The doctor left without a word, his feet clacking against the marble floor. He was the only one with noisy shoes, announcing his arrivals and exits like a fanfare. The nurses and cleaners moved about on silent feet, the only sound being the swoosh of the glass doors separating the sick from the rest of the world. The doors opened as his clacking feet approached and hot air rushed in to meet the cold. Fever ridden and freezing, the warmth felt like a hug in a snowstorm.

Before dengue, I worked at a hostel on an island called Koh Rong. Reachable by old, wooden boats burbling into the ocean, it was situated a couple of hours off the coast of Sihanoukville. Paradise on land they called it, and there was no name more fitting. Here the jungle kissed the ocean, separated only by a strip of powdery sands and a handful of shacks strewn about. Sans roads, sans stress, sans ATM’s, one merely kicked off ones shoes upon arrival and left barefooted. My boss was a man named Bunna – an orphan from a river delta in northern Cambodia – Illiterate in every language, but fluent in four. He had a young daughter in England, and sometimes we would practice writing in my notebook, so he could write her.

It was the beginning of rain season and business was slow, so I spent the days snorkeling, exploring the jungle and picking seashells, shards of glass and garbage on the beach. Cambodia is a dizzying concoction of beauty and horror, pristine and polluted – conches and syringes side-by-side. Having coaxed Bunna into adding some color to the place, I had taken it upon myself to paint the naked boards of the hostel bright blue. Balancing on a red, plastic chair shivering under my weight, I painted with sweat dripping from my forehead until the heat became unbearable and I jumped in the sea.

I thought it had been the island bug when I first fell ill – just a passing cold. I had a few mosquito bites, but thought little of them. People said dengue wasn’t present in paradise, but everyone’d caught it lately. They retreated into dark rooms with fans whirring loudly to relieve the heat whenever electricity was available, which it very rarely was. It started out softly – a fever so mild it felt like a hangover. In the day, my dorm room was a sweltering box, and in the silent absence of the fan, the pitter-patter of rat-feet running along the floors and hanging-beams grew into thundering noises. Instead, I occupied shaded hammocks and wicker chairs, leaning into travelling breezes whilst waiting for the bug to pass. Except it didn’t. Defeated, I left the island. Just for one night, I told myself, looking back at the people waving on the dock. Just for one night, I swore, as the island became a speck on the horizon.

“Noodles.” I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep – my eyes readjusted to a nurse hovering over me. The smell of spices made my stomach turn. Between hourly blood pressure measures, endless trays of pills, and cleaners leaving lights on and doors open at night; the force-feeding proved the most difficult. My stomach had forgotten how to stomach, and they seemed to blame it entirely on me. In Cambodia being sick was a matter of blame, not sympathy.
“Thank you.” I made no reach for the cup on my bedside table – but the nurse seemed in no rush to leave. I suspected the doctor had told him of my ways. Eventually I picked it up, ate a few mouthfuls, and watched him leave before putting it back down. I noticed a rash forming on my arms and my palms, they’d warned me that might happen – blood seeping through the veins – I decided not to investigate my legs. Instead, I dialed my mother, but the connection failed. I felt like an island.

During my last meal on Koh Rong, a fishbone lodged itself horizontally in my throat. “Eat,” Bunna said, and handed over a ball of rice. The bone didn’t budge. “Drink,” he said, handing me a bottle of water. “You cry too much,” he complained. Truthfully, I hadn’t noticed I was crying. “Eat,” he repeated, handing me another rice-ball. I was reduced to a blubbering toddler. Finally, the bone broke and I laughed, relieved, cheeks wet with tears. I wondered how I’d ever believed growing up in Norway had prepared me for the world, when a fishbone felt so final.

The IV-pole doubled as a crutch as I walked down the green-lit corridor towards the bathroom. Here were linoleum floors, and bare feet would stick. Blood traveled up the intravenous tube at the change of pressure – a red snake fighting a yellow one and winning. Keeping my arm low prevented blood from escaping, so whenever no one was around I walked hunchbacked with my arm stretched limp towards the floor.

I flushed and shuffled back to my bed, where I noticed the frosted windows had blackened. About to drift off to sleep, I heard a voice I knew so well, yet it seemed as if it travelled to me from another world. I turned to see my dad standing in the open door.

“Let’s go home,” he said casually, as if I was eight and he was picking me up from school, and it felt like I had waited forever.

The Melancholic Man

 

“I miss Montreal,” Richard said with his French accent. We were seated on a bench outside the recently closed Victoria marked with a quarter of a watermelon to share and no eating utensils. We realized it would not be pretty. We had met on the street in Melbourne a few days in advance. He was Canadian-Lebanese, and  prior to coming to Melbourne he lived in Montreal, which he had now called home for a number of years. About Richard I had come to learn that there were three things about which he was very particular. His coffee, his bicycles and his cameras. These three things would never be compromised by bad quality.

“I want to go back.” His eyes retraced the lines of his memories, the streets of the place he longed for, the way of the people he had left. Above us the leaves on the trees shivered slightly in the wind, drawing dancing shadows across his face.

“Why did you come here then?” I asked. Usually, fellow travelers had a longing not only to venture out, but to leave behind that which was familiar.

“I wanted to become better at making coffee. Melbourne is renowned for its coffee.” It was all very matter-of-factly. it sounded rehearsed. He shifted his paperback copy of Shantaram from his lap to the bench. He said it had stirred in him a longing to go to India. I nodded but said nothing, and in the silence, his walls crumbled.

“Also,” he said before he paused. The words struggled to form and I realized whatever came next was not spoken often.

“I suppose I was lonely there. I realized I’d rather be lonely someplace I didn’t know, rather than a place I did know.”

The Motorbike Crash

“Ollie, NO!” It was the only thing I could scream as the inevitable happened. When thinking back to these next few seconds, I realize that what is said about everything moving in slow motion in moments of danger, is absolutely true. I always thought I was going to be the one backpacker in Asia not to crash on a motorbike. But then again, so says everyone.

Let me take you back a couple of minutes. We are cruising down the Laotian country road under a baking sun. One german, one Aussie, two Canadians, three Gibraltarians and myself. We had all met up within the past couple of days, which in travel-time means we were well acquainted. My head feels heavy with the large helmet placed upon it, and I humor myself by bobbing my head from side to side like a metronome. I see my face appearing in the mirrors in turn as I sway on the back of the motorbike behind Chris. My eyes  hiding behind sunglasses, my forehead and chin tucked behind the padded helmet, and my cheeks undeniably squished. I slightly regret being talked out of the lightweight pink helmet painted with lilac flowers lying back at the rental shop. It looked to have been carved out of a coconut, and would have been much lighter on my head, and much cuter in the mirror. As my head keeps bobbing, I wonder if this is what it would feel like for the women of the Kayan tribe with their elongated necks, had their neck rings been cut.

It is a little past ten in the morning when we pass stall upon stall of watermelons piled high in large pyramids, watched over by somber-looking old ladies with sun streaked faces sheltering from the sun beneath woven roofs. Being a little behind schedule I had my bag slung on my back instead of having taking the time to strap it down on the bike with the unskilled hands of a western person having rarely done so before. In it was everything I needed for the next few days, leaving everything else behind in the hostel storage room, where I hoped they would keep from looking through it all. Apart from my computer there was not much of value left behind, and with the carefreeness that comes so willingly with traveling, I did not care. I was vaguely bothered by the chafing the straps left on my shoulders. It is funny how irrelevant things can seem so important at times.

My camera hangs around my neck so I can take pictures whenever something catches my eye, and in the Laotian countryside, my eyes are constantly caught. Endless fields off yellow crop stretch in every direction like a golden liquid, and containing this liquid are rows of tall limestone mountains looking like they have been painted with wide stripes of whites and blacks, stretching from the ground to the heavens wherever vegetation has not claimed them. Perhaps they were weeping.

As my eyes travel in waves along the ridges of the green mountains in the distance, some deep-rooted animalistic part of my brain notices commotion up ahead. It is instinctual, as my eyes seek the danger, and my whole body tenses. Everything begins to slow down, my breath hitches. I see a small child standing on the side of the road in a ragged t-shirt, waving his arms over his head as he yells intently at us to stop. There is an urgency about him. My eyes flicker ahead to Ollie being close to a standstill in the middle of the road – most likely to see what the child wants – his foot shooting out to meet the ground to keep the bike from falling. All thoughts are broken down to fractions in my mind. He has no break lights. We could not see him break. The panic courses through every vein in a split second. My warm skin feels icy cold. Ollie cannot hear us.

I feel our bike reacting, but we are too close. Much too close. Chris is hard on the breaks, but they are not cooperating and our bike seems eager for a crash. In a moment of crazy hope I think maybe Ollie will turn to the left and out of our path, but instead he pulls his handlebars to the right towards the kid – and us – and the inevitable is a fact.

“Ollie, NO!” I yell as our bikes collide. There is the screeching of metal and plastic bending in ways they were not intended, and I feel myself thrown from the bike. I am surprised at how long I am suspended in air, and wonder if perhaps I will never touch ground. I suppose I have always dreamt of flying, but I never imagined it quite like this.

The asphalt reaches up to kiss my body, and tenderly strips away skin as I tumble shorts- and tank top-clad in the hands of some wicked fate. As I land hard on my shoulder mid roll, my eyes open to see the heavy bike crashing toward me, but as quickly as I am tumbled back around again, the bike is out of my head. In my mind there is only air and asphalt. There are no coherent thoughts, only ancient instincts trying to remember what to do. After what feels both like an eternity and an instant, my body finally rolls to a halt. The bag on my back takes much of the fall, along with the helmet smashing into the ground twice – so loud that it sounded like the earth was split wide open. Lilac flowers would not do much for me now.

I scramble up, panicked, and realize I feel no pain, but I see blood seeping steadily through my skin in several places. I feel nauseous. There is blood and gasoline on the ground creating some macabre painting. I am fascinated at how red blood really is when spilled – it looks fake. Plastic and shards from mirrors are sprinkled everywhere. I check everything on my body, expecting to find some bone or the other protruding from my flesh in a horrid angle. My visor is smashed in half and barely hanging onto my helmet, and I begin to realize just how lucky I have been. I quickly turn on my camera, and find it is undamaged, by some luck I did not know I had, and I kiss it thankfully.

I look around for Chris, who seems to have taken the harder blunt of the fall, but also he is up. Ollie hurt his foot, but was merely pushed aside as we barreled through. The kid is nowhere to be seen. I am only half aware of all the swear words leaving my mouth. Tears stream down my face, and I am not sure if they are from shock or relief. I feel so silly for crying, but nothing will keep the tears and cusswords back. I only realize my sunglasses fell off my face mid-crash as I am handed them by Caitlin, and to my surprise they are still intact despite their cheap origins.

Pain begins setting in as we do some vehicular damage control with shaky hands, meanwhile trucks driven by Laotians pass us slowly as they hang out of their windows laughing at our distress. Apparently seeing the westerners, the falang involved in motorbike crashes is the most humorous thing. I almost feel like laughing along with them, and realize the shock has truly taken over both my body and mind. I put my glasses on my face and bend the broken visor all the way up to be able to better see, leaving it towering from the top of my helmet like a single, mangled antler.

After having bent back the gearing pedal in a fashion that would definitely not be accepted in the west, and scrubbed our sores raw with alcoholic wipes, we get back on the bikes. My leg burn dully as I raise it to straddle the seat. My knee is already beginning to swell beneath the bruising and the wounds. I could feel several pairs of eyes on my face and I knew I did a poor job at hiding my pain.

After a short discussion whether we ought to go back or keep on, we point our noses to untraveled terrain for another three days of motorbike adventures. As our bikes once again gained momentum on the hot pale asphalt, I hold tightly onto Chris’s shoulders and say very quietly,

“Please drive carefully.” It is almost more a prayer than a request. My body still shakes with fear and adrenaline, but there is no other way I want to go but onward. Pain will dull and disappear with time, and to help it along, the best remedy is always adventure.

The Great Detour

We were walking someplace in Copenhagen and hours had passed since I last truly knew where we were. The streets were empty, the only sound being the reverberation of our laughter and footsteps hollowly bouncing around between the stone houses. High on life and weary from walking we meandered our way through cobbled streets, narrow alleys and along sleeping canals. It was the last night in Denmark before I was headed back to Norway, with a weeklong festival in my back pocket, and a head giddy with lack of sleep and the feeling of being young. The beauty of being 21 is that there is no bedtime if you say so.

 

We were two Norwegians and two Swedes newly acquainted, and were switching between Swedish, English and Norwegian so seamlessly, we could not notice the switch ourselves. One swede was especially insistent that we stuck to Swedish and Norwegian, and I made sport out of trying to sneak the conversation over to English without him knowing it. My wide smile while he was midway in an English sentence made him throw his hands up in the air exclaiming “you did it again.” I knew I would again.

 

Clown like I was holding a map much too big for its purpose, holding it at arm’s length to better see where we were headed. I was unsure whether we were trying to find our way home or trying to get lost. I suspected it was someplace in the middle. I refolded the map after we had decided that we were probably, most likely heading in the right direction, and we walked down a road that we an hour later would find out was quite the opposite.

 

The smooth transition from day to night to day again always manages to surprise me. In a world where everything is defined, morning always has a way of sneaking up on you in the early hours, coaxing you into believing it had really been there all along. Especially here in Scandinavia during summer, when the sun ever truly sleeps with one eye closed.

 

Sometime in those hours of aimless walking and deep conversations through the streets of Copenhagen the sun finally did fully reclaim the skies, and somehow, unbeknownst to me, our feet brought us back home.

 

 

 

The Desirable Woman

 

I peeked up from my book while sitting at the gate to see a heavyset woman leaning on the counter on her elbows, deep in conversation with the gate agent. Her brow was furrowed in worry. Our flight was severely delayed due to a fire near Heathrow airport in London, forcing all traffic to use only one runway for both departures and arrivals. She was accompanied by a plump child of perhaps nine, wearing a yellow sundress over a pair of green and grey striped tights. Around the child’s neck hung a plastic necklace of every color, which I imagined she had crafted herself. The girl was running laps around the empty gate area with her arms out to her sides like an airplane. In one hand she clutched a coloring book, and in the other a handful of crayons. With her stubbornly frizzy, curly blonde hair, a short, wide-built body and glasses, the girl was a spitting image of her mother.

From what I had overheard from the conversation at the desk, the mother and child were assigned separated seats on the plane, an issue she seemed very concerned about. The clerk was nodding understandingly as his finger scrolled rapidly, while he stared with dead eyes into the computer screen.

“Yes, I see here that your seats are indeed apart…,” he trailed off, still staring into the screen.

“But I see here that you have been placed in seat 3a, which is a very desirable seat. I am sure it will be no problem to place you together once we board the aircraft.” I found it dificult not to smile at her reaction. Her whole body shifted, she stood a little straighter, no longer leaning on the counter.

“Oh. It is desirable?” She asked smugly, a proud little smile on her lips, looking as if she believed the desirability of a seat rubbed over on her as the temporary holder. She was now desirable. 

“Yes, very desirable,” the man confirmed, still looking into his screen, his voice sounding a milion miles away. I could tell he wanted to be done with the conversation. The woman turned around to glance at her child who had finally stopped runnning around and was sat down on the floor in a corner, coloring in her book. She almost seemed reluctant to give up her seat now.

With that, I shifted my attention back to my book with a smile, marveling at all the conversations one can eavesdrop to at an airport.

 

The Bus Ride

For a while I found myself counting the seconds between honks. One second, two seconds, three seconds, honk. One second, two seconds, honk honk. The furthest I got was to six seconds, at which point I decided to spend my energy more wisely, on selectively blocking out the sound altogether.

I found myself on a night bus between cities in Vietnam, and it was painfully obvious that the seats were not made for people my height. My legs were crammed into a small plastic leg compartment, having to bend in weird places to fit. Sleeping in the aisle next to my seat was a Vietnamese man wearing a plaid shirt and long pants, snoring loudly into a beat down, discolored pillow. He was the second driver who would take over half way, or whenever the first got tired. Every once in a while when the bus hurtled around a left corner in the dark, or dodged a moped sans headlights, his leg would bump into mine, and my not having the heart to wake a sleeping man, I simply waited til a right turn when his legs would swing the other way.

From a metal bar across the windscreen hung a bright-red tasseled picture of Buddha, swaying with the motions of the bus. It was bathed in a thick cloud of smoke herded into a slow spiral by the wind from the open driver seat window. Some of the smoke would be urged on by the wind to travel down the aisles, leaving everything smelling of cigarettes. The driver seemed to be craving a cigarette at all times of driving, knocking off ash into the night air out the window whenever he could spare some time between honking.

Sometimes the honks would erupt like the coughs of a sick man; sporadic and urgent, perhaps to scare someone smaller off the road. Other times, when to honk or not to honk seemed a mere choice situation, it would be a more melodious performance. It was as if the bus driver entertained himself on the fourteen hour drive by rendering songs with his horn. I had long ago realized that I would not get much sleep, and I briefly wondered if it had been a mistake to have passed so hardheadedly on the Valium every backpacker in South East Asia seemed to be on.

Engulfed in smoke and darkness and with a leg bumping into mine I finally drifted off into a swaying, honking sleep on a bus flying through the Vietnamese night.

The Three Emotions

“Let me tell you something,” Vilté said with a hint of a Lithuanian accent, her electric blue eyes locking with mine. Her and I had met just a few days prior at a little restaurant in Hoi An and struck an instant connection. Now we were sitting on a wooden boat somewhere off the coast of Vietnam, beneath a sun playing hide and seek between the few clouds in the sky. Our friends were dozing off on the deck, having found some life vests for a makeshift mattress on top of the ropes and the hard wooden floors. It was hard not to be lulled into a slumber by the small waves rocking the boat softly, along with the soothing burbles of the engine.

Whether it was because of the amount of coconuts we had consumed that day, or the sun we had been exposed to, or perhaps the distance to the shore, we began sharing stories from our lives; the funny ones, the angry ones, the sad ones, and the ones we wished we had forgotten but knew we never would. “There are three types of emotions,” she said. “First, there are the ones you write in air.” As she spoke, her fingers traced invisible letters looping in the air. “They are immediate, like an impulsive laugh to a joke, or the hurt when you prick your finger. As soon as they are there, they are also gone. Second are the ones you write in sand, they will linger for a while, but eventually the wind or the water will grab a hold and carry them off. Third, are the ones you set in stone, once they are written, they will stay forever. You should never write sorrow in stone.” Her voice gave away that she knew what she was talking about, her eyes looking off into the horizon across the water.

The Travel Advice

“Who you travel with?” He asked with curiosity, peering at me from under his soccer cap. We were sitting on the bleachers overlooking the soccer match that was nearing half time, me and the Vietnamese field caretaker. Out on the field my friend had just got the ball, and was cutting through an opening in the defense. The sun had long disappeared, and the green field was heavily lit by huge spotlights, making the players draw long dancing shadows across the grass as they ran. It was a warm night for LA springtime, a cardigan was enough to keep me warm. Although he had lived in the States for a long time, his Vietnamese accent was still evident in his voice.  He had sat down once the players ran out to the field, and our conversation had gone between everything like politics to soccer, cooking, and now travel. I told him where I came from, and where I had been, and where I wanted to go. I told him of my love for his home country and its cuisine.

“Myself,” I said and shrugged. Traveling solo had been the most liberating decision I had ever made, but for some, a quite controversial one, I had come to realize. Before starting my travels, I had been given advice from everyone and everything, from old well-meaning elementary school teachers to misinformed magazine articles. Dye your hair brown – blonde hair is a dangerous provocation in Asia. Never smile at anyone, it is an invitation – Yes, an invitation to start a conversation like two normal human beings. Wear a wedding ring, it will ward off unwanted attention. Bring a fake image of said husband. Oh, and he is also a wrestler. And so it goes. It made me sad that it was advised to do all these things in 2014, when I personally was a year and a half into my own travels, and knew that being street smart and aware was enough to keep me safe, blonde hair, ring finger, and dignity untouched. However, I also knew that the people whose advice I had been given meant nothing but well when they spoke, so I always thanked them for their concern.

“You traveled alone, in Viet-Nam?” he asked incredulously as he turned around to face me completely, his eyes wide as he put extra emphasis on his home land. I nodded as he shook his head, his face creasing with disapproval.

“It is dangerous.” He said, “Next time, you travel with someone.” I knew it was a topic we would not agree on, so I was ready to nod and smile and promise I would, although I knew very well I would not. Traveling alone is addictive like a drug, with the freedom, the possibilities, all the people along the way. But before I could speak, he continued.

“If you travel with somebody you just met, and something happens, an explosion or something, they run. They say I don’t know who this person is, and they run. If you travel with somebody who cares about you, they will grab your hand and say let’s get somewhere safe.”  It was the sweetest advice I had gotten, and I could not help but smile.

The whistle must have marked halftime, because all the players came running off the field at once, sweaty and smiling, a commotion of voices and laughter. I got caught up in the action for a second, and when I turned back to my Vietnamese friend, he was gone. In the seconds I was distracted he must have slipped away silently for some reason or the other, and craning my neck I could see him walking down the side of the field, half in darkness, half in light. Just as he was about to disappear into the darkest part of the soccer fields, he turned around and tipped his cap, looking straight at me. I waved back smiling, and knew I would remember his advice forever.

The Escalator Challenge

I was once dared by a friend to run up a downward facing escalator. It was not one of those short ones found in shopping malls, but a monstrous beast transporting travelers to and from an underground train platform. I was twenty years old and far too old to respond to such a ridiculous idea, but my competitive flare and stubborn personality weighed out my age by a lot and before the escalators were even in sight I accepted the challenge. My friend laughed like someone who held the much better end of a deal and eagerly fumbled with his phone, doubtlessly to record my attempt. I was keen to prove him wrong.

When the escalators came into view, I inhaled sharply and tried my best to hide the shock from my face. They were much longer than I had anticipated, but there was no way I was letting my friend know that. There were two sets of elevators, two going up, and two going down, but for me, there was just one elevator going down. Luckily they were all empty save for a couple of people leaving the platform. We had been first off the train, and behind us I could hear the sounds of commuters. Footsteps, laughter, people on phones discussing a meeting or their grocery shopping or something else of relative importance.

As I walked towards the escalator of my choice while staring it down to intimidate it into running slower, I realized I would have a massive crowd. The ascending escalators were filling up, and I regretted having agreed so keenly. Behind me, my friend was undoubtedly grinning evilly.

My legs moved quicker than my mind, and before I knew it my feet had found a steady pace and had climbed more than a dozen steps. The heavy woolen scarf and denim jacket I was wearing bounced heavily as I ran,and the tap-tap of my feet created a faint echo within the tunnel. The people in the upward rising escalators all seemed to realize what was going on at once and began cheering like one might when someone chugs a beer. Their hey-hey-hey’s drowned out the sound of both my feet and my breathing, and my determination rose with every cheer, my feet quickening their pace. There was no way I could fail now, it just would not do. My speed matched that of the others, while my eyes were locked to the two-three metal steps ahead.

Then I felt it. A dreading tiredness seeping into my legs. It seemed to shoot through my veins and settle in every muscle, all the way to the bone. My legs began freezing up, my hip joints no longer moving like they were supposed to, it felt like I was running through water.

My eyes flickered ahead and saw with both relief and terror that the metal curve at the top of the escalator was only a few meters away.