Day 78: Tired

Like memory deteriorating with age, I knew this was coming. You’re warned of it in advance but you never quite believe it’s going to happen to you.

The truth is I’m tiring of the big sites and attractions.

As much as I wish it were otherwise, wish I could always put up the front of having limitless energy and enthusiasm, that isn’t my truth at the moment.

Why now? It’s a combination of me being near the end of this chapter of my travels and being in Siem Reap, home to Angkor and the largest concentration of temples and ruins in the world.

Siem Reap the town is the seediest place I’ve been to. It’s essentially impossible to walk around at night without being offered drugs and sex. The pressure to get you to spend on tours, transport, massages, trinkets etc.. is relentless. The landscape is covered in fine yellow dust like a jaundiced Instagram filter. Like Dubai, there’s an unhealthy-feeling combination of parched earth and humid air. We’re still weeks away from the cleansing of the first rains of the new season and everything feels sickly. Ready for change but unable to do anything other than wait. An exhausting and uninspiring town, especially after the vibrance of Bali.

Angkor, however, remains a literally awesome place. It presents another problem altogether: it’s vast. It’s hard to stuff all the possibilities into my head and make a plan. And although there’s a certain amount of shame to it, I’ve been dallying, trying to ease into Angkor rather than jumping into the wonders contained in those hot dusty temples.

I met folks earlier in my trips (a Brit at a hostel in Portland, photographer in Bangkok come to mind) who had been traveling for a long time. They took much more frequent breaks. They unashamedly took entire days off to doink around on the computer or read. Intellectually I understood at the time that I would get tired in that same way. I remember noting it and wondering how it would be for me. But I couldn’t feel it back then. I was still finding effortless abundant energy to fill every day with the joyous newness of it all.

Now I do feel it. I’ve been in Siem Reap for four days and have spent only one at the temples. I’ve a full tour planned tomorrow and the first day was recovering from the lack of sleep on my overnight flight from Bali and the preceding sinus infection, but it’s still a very languid pace for this truly exceptional place. The back of my mind is whispering at me how I’ll regret all this indolence when I’m far away and it again seems impossible not to be electrified at the possibilities now contained just 15 Km down the road…

This is simply another lesson to learn from travel. Finding the right balance between doing and being. Realizing that this balance will shift and my energy will wax and wane and the only solution is to be mindful of it. Breaking me of my bad habit of scheduling everything to leave no time for serendipity or even proper self-care. So even in this ‘failure’ to get to eighth wonder of the world, there’s a victory.