David

I wasn’t homesick, or even lonely, not really. But I was something. Solo travel for all of its benefits, has its own challenges. Loneliness or whatever I was feeling, is one of them.

David shares this philosophy

It isn’t that I hadn’t talked to anyone, I have a penchant for talking to strangers even when I'm in the US and have easy access to friends. But meaningful conversation is different from the small talk strangers often exchange when they travel.

“How long are you traveling?”

“Where have you been?”

“Do you have a favorite thing you’ve done?”

Even when they manage to move beyond those basics, like when a Dutch duo shared an alternative boat route from Luang Prabang to Chaing Rai, or the Irish couple that shared tales of travel wonder and woe, the time is often short, the circumstances tenuous.

Pakse, for all that it lacked, provided me with something I needed more than the giant Buddha or the probably trickling waterfall on offer (it is the dry season...and dry season is not hyperbole).

I met David the first day I arrived. He greeted me heartily, told me about the happy hour upstairs, and left a friendly open-ended invitation that I had every intention of accepting. But travel days are scattered, meal times are disrupted, and in this case, the thing I was craving the most – connection – manifested itself in the form of calls from home.

But calls are just calls. Lovely but fleeting. A few minutes after I hang up, I’m left in the quiet of my room. It is the reason I am so obnoxious about friends being on the phone when we are hanging out. “I'm a real person in real time,” I always say.

David was a real person in real time.

Two days into my stay and David and I overlapped at breakfast. Chatty as I am he struck up a conversation and I invited him to join me. Six hours later he had errands to run so we arranged to meet up later.

Conversations with veritable strangers can be challenging. Out of any p;articular context of a job or an event, there is nothing to suggest shared interests or philosophies. And while searching out people that are the same as you can be limiting and problematic, I the current state of political affairs, discussions with strangers who are decidedly different in their social or political views have their own challenges.

the Buddha we didn't see

That didn’t prove to a problem for us. If nothing else we had travel in common, so we started there. Started with where we've been and where we are going. We moved to how long we've been traveling to what brought us here. And by the time we hit that note, we were all over the place. Even politics.

The politics of America, our president, the likelihood that he’ll get re-elected. The politics of England, the likelihood of a chaotic Brexit, Cameron’s place in the blame.

We laughed about the prices and wondered how the city justified tour prices that exceeded those for Angkor Watt. We found a trendy night spot filled with places to drink and eat and wondered how we managed to be the only foreigners in the place.

I left Pakse before David. He let me store my bag in his room since the hotel demanded more money to extend my checkout by 6 hours then I had paid to stay there. He wandered the city with and when my bus was late, he sat beside me and kept me company.

On a trip that is at once amazingly fulfilling and at times lonely- David was a welcome respite from small talk and books. And even now, both of us far from the place where we met, we are still in touch. His texts from Vietnam swirled in with the ones from America…and I appreciate it. Appreciate the gift of a stranger I now call friend.