The race

Around the corner from our hotel was a little holiday-hire place with a blue scooter and two oversized helmets. For a measely amount and a signature on some forms written in a language I don't understand, I was tossed the keys and warned that there was just enough gas in the tank to make it to the next petrol station.

And so we embarked.

With a full tank of fuel we set about taking wrong turns, flying through the jungle, struggling up hills, dodging roadkill and banana skins and revelling in the wind that lifted the helmets half off our heads, laughing all the way.

Come late afternoon we returned to the hotel and realised that there would be a grand race that evening. Not wanting to miss it, we donned some long sleeves and met by our tiny blue steed in the hotel carpark from where the race was to commence.

And without warning it began! Out of the hotel carpark, taking a short cut through the next parking lot, up and over the footpath, the wrong way down a one-way and we were ahead almost immediately. One red helmet and one white, flapping in the wind as we giggled at our initial daring success.

But our confidence overwhelmed our sense of urgency until we noticed that we were losing our illustrious lead. The hard thing about being in front is having no one to follow, instead having to rely on nothing more than some scratchings on a piece of paper, waving in the wind, with no more right to call itself a map than we had right to call our scooter a steed.

Is that the turn off? The sign says this way! Is this the long way?

I can't read this, it makes no sense - follow the signs! Oh, wait. This is taking us the long way! We can't go back now...

And with that there was a renewed vigour in my twisting wrist, riding the throttle in the fading light. We could see our racing partner ahead, chasing down the finish line with a steadiness that seemed unbeatable, inevitable. But there was power beneath our bottoms yet.

That was our prize. This was our race.

With a flick of the wrist and the mercy of a downhill run, we leaned into the corners, roaring with hysterical glee over the scream of the engine, blind through intersections, around slow traffic, darting through pedestrians,

there's the turn off!

sliding now with the sand and gravel into the final destination. Did we make it?

Did we make it?

We both turn, look our over the white sand, past the gentle lapping of the bright blue ocean and know that we had, indeed, won the race.

I grabbed her hand and we ran over the sand to claim our well-earned reward. The most beautiful sunset over a perfect beach, with tropical islands silhouetted across the horizon and the pinks and oranges of a quickly sinking sun sliding off the few pure white clouds, filling the sky with colours aplenty.

The sand was still warm from the last of the sun's rays. We sat, sank our toes in and breathed the perfection.

With the last of the light we returned to our trusty two-wheeled friend and leisurely trundled towards what would be an amazing seafood dinner, cooked in the local Langkawi style, enjoyed at a tiny table looking out over the beach.

We smiled.

The day had been ours.

August Rush

An update from Edinburgh, which is where I am planning on living until the end of November.

I finally have a roof over my head, an agency that doesn't seem to have any problems placing me in jobs and just enough money in the bank account that I can still afford to eat.

Internet access has been limited in Edinburgh, and my web time has been dedicated to job and apartment hunting - not too much has changed in that department, except that my current job allows for some free time online. Hooray!

Life in Edinburgh is... a vibrant, lively grey. Like the clouds that perpetually exist just above the city skyline, Edinburgh is a city with a million different tones, shapes and shades all concealed within the same colour - grey.

There is a rather dramatic beauty in clouds. At a glance they may appear oppressive, overbearing and dull. Yet they are alive, moving, changing all the time. Sometimes they float, sometimes they roll, sometimes they're harbingers of a booming doom, other times they're merely the gateway to the paradisiacal blue above - there's a diversity in their consistency. They're always there, but if you look closely there is always something new to be found in the way they move, in the shapes they make, in the tiny gaps between.

The weather here might be rather dull, but that isn't Edinburgh's most prominent feature (although it might be my most prominent point of complaint). With the world's largest festival just coming to an end, Edinburgh is taking a new shape. As the crowds fade and the party-goers leave, the city is coming into its own and revealing the calm beauty that exists even after the excitement has left.

The drama of a castle perched atop the crags, the gentle, green roll of Arthur's Seat (Edinburgh's highest hill) and the concrete crassness of the eternally-busy Princes Street form just three sides of a city with many. The fact that Edinburgh is a town whose city boasts not one but two ground levels for many of its buildings is rather indicative of the vibe of this place - you can walk in on ground floor, and leave on ground floor, but end up in an entirely new place. Like the shifting shapes of the clouds overhead, Edinburgh is a city to be explored and enjoyed by those with an appreciation of their own imagination.

And for those with patience.


I wish those clouds would hurry up and disappear, I miss the sunshine.

Tripping over

There are many fine lines in life: between love and hate, pleasure and pain, success and failure. Travelling puts this already-too-skinny line on a diet, starving the barrier that keeps us from the horror on the other side to the point of transparency.

Yes, you can have some of the most rewarding experiences that life has to offer. Yes, your mind is expanded in a dozen different directions all at once. But a huge part of this enjoyment, this fulfilment, this satisfaction is the fact that we can tramp so close to the other side without even realising it.

Because each one of our senses is engaged in trying desperately to absorb the new world around us, we become so absorbed in the experience that we forget the pain that can exist side-by-side with pleasure. We forget the hate that balances love.

So when we slip, tripping over that now anorexic line, we can fall hard.

Ignorance is only bliss for as long as we can stay ignorant. If the hard times manage to creep up on us, we are caught by surprise. Who would think that standing in line to cross the border into Canada could so quickly lead to a violent, physical arrest (as happened to someone in the line ahead of me)? How was I to believe that the owner of the cafe wouldn’t actually give me a job, despite her frequent reassurances? When, how, why did that person so suddenly leave our world back home? It isn’t fair! Where did this pain suddenly erupt from, how did this tragedy sneak into my wonderful worldly adventure? How am I supposed to feel about it? How do we react?

When we are torn from our ideal world of travel and happiness it happens quickly and without warning. Being so far from the comforts of home makes the shock harder to bear and the disbelief can reverberate far louder than when we are in a familiar place.

All of a sudden the brilliance and the wonder of the new things which surround us lose their attractiveness. All of a sudden we are lost. The wide world becomes a scary, claustrophobic place which has us trapped far from the security of our known lives. All of a sudden the freedom of travelling becomes a fear of being so far away.

But the thing about love and hate and about pleasure and pain is that they are mutually reliant on each other – one cannot exist without the other. This is not always an easy truth to accept when you are on your own thousands of kilometres from home, but it is an essential part of travelling.

It is hard to remember, but this is one of the reasons I am here. I won’t always know what I am doing here. I won’t have my safety net to help me deal with those sneaky problems that come crashing into my new world. I will want to pack it all in and come home. But then tomorrow, or maybe the next day, I will be reminded. I am here because of this. I am here to live through this. I am here because I want to be.

It may be a thin line, made even finer by my distance from home... But every time I trip over, I will to try to remember that the other side of it isn’t far away.