Who Needs Tonight?

*written a month prior to when we went ahead and booked all of our onward travel ;-)

The five days we meant to stay in Nha Trang turned into two weeks. Our two-day stopover in Mui Ne lasted eight. And the three nights we meant to spend in Saigon resulted in nine. I’m starting to notice a trend here. We are SLOW.

Between the people we’ve met, our always-exceeded expectations of places, and the few freelance gigs Reece has gotten, our stride has dropped considerably. Days are broken up with work. Social engagements keep us sticking around. Researching our next destination and onward travel logistics falls further on our priority list each day. On the one hand we feel like we’ve lost our travel momentum. On the other, we feel exceedingly comfortable in this relaxed pace. It feels less and less like a “trip” and more like, well, just “life”. A nomadic one. That costs a whole lot less than living at home.

It’s an interesting notion not having a general schedule to adhere to. When time is no longer a finite currency to be prioritized on one place over another, the pressure to squeeze it all in is eliminated. My favorite of Reece’s misquoted song lyrics - “Who needs tonight, we’ve got tomorrow” – has jokingly become our new motto. It makes the question of when we’ll end this particular journey increasingly difficult to answer (especially if the work keeps coming in). And it’s allowing us to get to know people and places and cultures in a way we have never been able to before.

We don’t know where we will head after Cambodia. We’ve heard amazing things about Laos. We’d love to revisit Thailand. We’re dying to go to Myanmar. We’ve got some pretty exciting and compelling reasons to head back to the US, too. On the way home, should we stop in Japan? Australia?? The Philippines??? When I think about it too much I start to panic and want to pack my bag up and get this train moving. But probably not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.