A Lasting Souvenir

July 2008 – Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Distances, times, movement, transportation, expenses, weather…These are things that they have learned to plan for, to predict, to react to. They can judge the quality of an accommodation based on the furniture in the lobby. They can recognize good food by the ratio of Westerners to locals in the restaurant. They can predict the weather based on weeks and months of patterns and experiences – it will always rain when they have to walk anywhere; it will always be hottest when there is no air conditioning available. Now, though, they face a new set of challenges: space, separation, and returning. Soon they will trade newness for normalcy and foreign for familiar.
There is a line from a song that says, “You can go back but you can’t go back all the way.” It will ring very true as they face a familiarity rife with rules and regulations that no longer make sense. “Why does that meal cost $15? I got twice as much in Laos for $2!!” “Why do you need to leave the water running? Turn the shower off while you soap up!” Little things, small details that in their former life they never questioned or considered. Travel is eye-opening, they say. They don’t say how disturbing some things are when you open your eyes for too long. Will they learn to close them again? Or to see this world – their world – in a new way? Only that slippery demon of time can answer that.
Lessons learned, miles traveled, experiences, memories, stories – all together. Six solid months of seeing and doing things together. It strikes them as odd to consider a future on their own. It isn’t frightening or intimidating – just odd. They might not even miss each other all that much. In the way that they cannot take their travels with them when they return, so they cannot keep this friendship – this travel companionship – intact as-is upon their return. A new and different friendship will develop. Its foundation will be this trip and it will be different and stronger for the memories.
No, nothing will be the same. But that’s why they left, isn’t it? To avoid the “sameness” that plagues a “normal” life. They came here looking for the different – and they will return with the knowledge of how to see things differently. A kind of souvenir that never loses its value.
So they go their separate ways. To the ocean or to the prairie. The sea or the shore. But these two friends are forever linked by the memories made of the places no one else saw and the voices no one else heard.