Traveling? Yet Again.

It has been quite a long time since the last time I wrote something. I mean with all the works, romance and personal struggle through everything, I had spent so little time for this particular activity (thank God I finally have a life). It’s not that I am a regular or professional writer or anything. It’s just that I used to like writing once in a while. So here I am, trying to rebuild the habit hoping to be able to make something out of what has been left off, what has been unused for a quite some time.

So what I like to talk about this time is traveling. This particular topic has been on my mind since a very long time (to make sure of it, I have written couple about it). I have to admit that I am some kind of a late bloomer for this kind of thing, looking up to those traveling gods I read on the magazine or some places worthy of visit that they have been. Here I reasoned why, it was not only because I had no money to do that but also I had no gut. It was gut mostly though, to be more honest. But not anymore, I have money now, it was not a lot but if you save up a little, it could take you to places. So I now travel. 

Pantai Cemara Kecil, Karimunjawa.

Speaking of traveling, I like to talk about a fellow traveler I ran into the other day. The story was just to help me make a point out of this writing. It was a young foreigner on my way home the other day. We took the same minivan to Pangandaran, my hometown, her traveling destination. It was like a private shuttle services so it provided door to door pick-up service. We were the first two passengers in the minivan. The waiting was killing us. I knew it’s killing me. And it’s killing me too, not to initiate conversation when, aside of the driver, there were only us. I might have got quite a story from this foreigner and some time to kill.

So it began with “wow we are waiting for the passenger to come” on my part, she responded with “yeah, is this some kind of housing for rich people?” and the conversation continued to traveling, how she had been sitting for more than 20 hours on a bus hopping from Padang to Medan, all by herself (yeah, I was amazed too). And the conversation moved on towards the most fundamental thing in our existence in the world of how we perceived religion. It’s not that she was in some kind of in a mission of religion neither was I, with all the religious talking. Bottom line, we’re not religious freaks. We were just couple strangers who, for the long hours, got stuck together and made conversation of whatever came to mind and surprisingly we shared the same questions and confusion about what religion really was. And the funny thing was that I never got her name, neither did she.

Oma Alchy Bar, Karimunjawa.

But anyway, my point was that traveling not only could get you to places but it also could get you to meet a lot of people you would not expect when packing your bag and sitting on a bus, train, plane or ship and discussed the most private, essential and unlikely subject you probably would not discuss with the people you already knew at home.  You got the chance to have insights from complete strangers who you probably meet only once in your life but you will remember them and their stories for the rest of your life, not to mention their companies to enjoy beers and cigarettes. All we have to do is to be open and that is exactly what I have been trying.