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Ode to slow travel. And to the reasons you could do it too
“Instead of wonder WHEN your next vacation is, maybe you need to setup a life you don’t need to escape from,” Seth Godin
February is the best month to visit Bangkok. Forget the forty Celsius degree and the tropical storms. In winter the sky is clear and there are thirty degree at most.
I go out, sit in in a bar just in front of a pedestrian street, order a breakfast with eggs, mango juice and coffee. I plug in my Vaio 11.3 inches, switch it on and start to work.
I get lost among the web of Gothic tattoos of the Norwegian tourists and the screams of the waitresses wrapped up on succinct dresses that unveil small breasts and a backside that will never know the taste of cellulite.
I reckon that I’m arrived then days ago but I don’t know almost nothing about this town. I spend most of my time on this terrace, writing and programming a website that will soon be online.
I grew up in a small village that barely reaches the two thousand people. Maybe this is the reason for which I love metropolis.
Here the people that cross your gaze are never the same. There is always a new opportunity waiting for you. You only have to stand up and take it.
But when you only got fifteen days to visit a country it’s difficult to notice this kind of things. We are too busy checking out the next Buddhist temple or organizing our trip to the old town of Ayutthaya. Yes, the one two hours away from the capital. You already know that it will be a struggle. But everybody says that it’s unmissable.
And maybe you will be afraid to go out at night. Because the unknown triggers our fears. Always. And you can’t know a city like Bangkok, Bogotà or Beijing in two days. Not even in a year.
However when you stay a couple of days in a city, you gain confidence, visit neighborhoods that haven’t any touristic interest. Neighborhoods that are authentic. Neighborhoods that aren’t even on the Lonely Planet : O
Why am I writing it?
I’m writing this article with the intention of inspiring and challenging all those people that are tired of waiting the first July to get their holiday and then find themselves trudging from a train to another to visit China – or maybe Russia – in two weeks because, they think:
“I must do it now. Who the hell knows when it will be my next holiday?”
It ends up that among the jet-lag, the 5 a.m. alarm to sightseeing as much is humanly possible and the night buses, we become hypersensitive zombies, we get acne, diarrhea and constipation at the same time.
I know it well. Three years ago I went from Paris to Beijing for six days (I only had that holiday). Three hours after I landed I was already climbing up the Great Wall of Mutianyu.
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