Our first sign of a different culture came at the baggage claim, where the suitcases were neatly stacked side by side like slices of wonder bread, a distinct change from the typical goulash of bags at every other airport I’ve been to. The second sign came in the restroom, with a menu of buttons promising “cleansing”, “drying”, and even “privacy”, which a note explained would initiate a series of recorded flushing sounds designed to cover other, more embarrassing sounds. America – where your grade school buddies congratulate you from the next stall if you’re able to make the restroom uninhabitable – this is not.

—- next day —-

A recurring add on the subway screens shows a row of excited commuters, each jostling elbows with the others as they tap away at games on their phones. Then, a reset, and a woman calmly reading a Kindle, each page-changing tap smooth and serene. An American would see the message as “books are boring”, but here the serene is the obviously-positive alternative to the immature video-gaming commuters.

The streets this morning were so quiet we could hear the nearby crows greeting the day.

A few cars passed, and a few bicycles, and a few pedestrians. All were whisper quiet, even the delivery van, which hummed softly on an electric motor.

The subway where I write has only the sounds of station announcements and the wheels on the track beneath us. We arrive as if in a population struck mute. I begin to understand both the peace and loneliness of Tokyo.

In order to get Amp’s Canadian visa, we had to compile an ungodly amount of information about our bank accounts, recent travels, our relationship (we basically printed the entire Facebook Friendship page with our shared pictures and trips), and had to write a letter formally requesting she be allowed to pass through Canada on the motorcycle trip. That letter was pretty damn dry — I included the phrases “vouch for her character”, “financial solvency”, and “earnestly hopeful”. I somehow doubted that the Canadian embassy staff member would be kind after reading something that boring, so I also wrote the following…

Appendix B

The Much More Interesting Story of How Christian and Amp Met

The attached letter is, necessarily, almost criminally boring. I hope you’ll find this more entertaining.

When Amp and I met, we were both working for Wall Street English, an English school targeting university students and young professionals. Amp was the trainer for the front desk service staff, the “Service Officers” (officers? Really?), while I was a teacher in the Ladphrao center. I was interested in becoming a service manager and as part of the candidate training all of us who were qualified had to go through training for service officers – led by Amp.

Sparks flew quickly between us, but definitely the wrong kind. I was too American, she says, though I think she just didn’t appreciate my eagerness and ability to recall vast amounts of information – it didn’t fit with the Socratic way she tried to teach when I had read the answers from the manual they gave us. For me, I dismissed her after I tried to start up a friendly conversation as we all went to lunch and she issued a curt “it’s none of your business” to me. Granted, I probably shouldn’t have asked my trainer why she had chosen to remain a virgin till 25, but I was young and curious. And, honestly, a bit blind and naïve. (And she says obnoxious, but really? Let’s stick to young and curious. It’s kinder. For the kidner.)

If it weren’t for us going through a training together a few weeks later, I doubt we would have ever said more than a few words to each other at a time. We both went in for management training, and the cool animosity continued. But Amp, if you ever meet her, has a certain amount of gravity about her, a confidence that I found really attractive, even if annoying – the boss asked us each to come up with an ‘icebreaker’ game, and Amp flat out refused to join the one I’d developed. She wasn’t a joiner, but somehow she wasn’t bothered by not joining teams. She seemed to have no need of others’ approval. I couldn’t relate, but I did envy that.

Mid-week I found out she really, really liked brownies from a nearby restaurant, so I bought a pan for the whole class, knowing that there were too many and I could give her extra. The ice broke just a bit. Just barely. At the end of the week we all went for dinner. She and I ended up seated across from one another, and talked throughout the evening. It turned out she was really interesting, a kind of Bangkok hipster, but with less pretention. She liked indie movies and knew cool spots to hang out in the city. It also turned out that she absolutely refused to eat anything green (no vegetables!) and wouldn’t drink any alcohol. But I got her to try a little of each before we all parted ways.

Because I was trying to show leadership, I set up a dinner with the other trainees about a week after that, and that’s when I found out more about Amp’s heart condition. She’d been born with a congenital hole in her heart, only discovering it because of a smart x-ray tech when she got her physical for her Australian visa. But more intriguing, she had me feel her heartbeat, which was pumping out 120 beats per minute while resting, and we had an oddly intimate moment with my hand on her breastbone, trying my best to be conservative in my placement. She swears it was unintentional.

Bangkok was flooding, and none of us knew one day to the next whether we would be working. It was unsettling, but kind of cool. All the trainees went to a party at one trainee’s apartment, and we had to clamber over a four-foot sandbag barrier to get into the parking lot. Amp doesn’t drink, but the party atmosphere had us all more relaxed. She had this habit of pulling her shoulders up (stress from knowing about the heart surgery, I think) and I wanted to see if I could relax the muscles there, so for two hours during the party we sat on the living room floor, me just behind her, and I massaged her neck and shoulders. At the end of the night we decided to meet up for a movie the next day, since neither of us was working with the floods around our areas. (Now, again, I should note here that Amp swears that I actually invited myself along to a movie she was already going to see. That doesn’t fit with what I remember, so we’ve agreed to disagree.)

I arrived early the next day at CentralWorld for our semi-date-like-thing, and chilled at a Starbucks behind a bookshop to write a letter home. It turns out she loved the idea of me loving coffee, books and handwritten letters, but I wouldn’t know that for months. She was a bit recalcitrant when she arrived, a bit closed off. We had coffee and sat on a fantastic leather couch (we later decided we would need one for our house someday, but again, that wasn’t till much, much later), chatted a bit, went up to look at movie times. The next one we both wanted to see was Melancholia in a few hours, so we wandered the mall and chatted. I don’t remember much about what we said, but I remember visiting a few furniture shops and comparing favorites, playing with Lego at the Toys’R’Us, and me pretending I was going to toss her over the railing from a few floors up, which caused her to grab me really tight. (Again, a little difference here – I think this was playful and fun, but she now claims that she didn’t enjoy it, even though I think she really did enjoy somebody breaking through her shell and not being thrown off by her often-cool exterior. Agree to disagree.) In the movie she started crying heavily. I didn’t know what to do, so I put my arm around her. (Not like a first-date let-me-see-if-I-can-do-this type move, but more of a what-the-hell-do-I-do-with-this-crying-woman gesture. It turns out that she cries during nearly every movie she ever watches. Really, even the comedies. Every movie.) Anyway, we had dinner after, and stayed till the mall closed around us. I offered my arm – she took it, and said, “I can see why people like this.” So  small, but I felt like a million bucks.

(I should put in a little side note, here. Amp was a virgin, but more than that, on our first date she told me that she had never even kissed one of her boyfriends (or girlfriends- she’s bi), or held hands, and, furthermore, that if we dated, I shouldn’t expect to see her more than about once a week. I said we’d see how it went. She was okay with that.)

Our next date was two days later, another movie, this time at her favorite theater, a little tiny complex in RCA. Not working for a few days was great – we showed up early and spent the day. We talked at Starbucks, we talked at the little café in the cinema lobby over ice cream, and when we sat down for the movie I put my arm around her and she curled right up to me. “This feels really natural.” It did. Afterward we started talking about places open late, and went to a British pub, The Black Swan. I put my arm around her again, and once, when her eyes were closed for a story I was telling, I kissed her. Then we kissed again. And again. The pub shut down at midnight, so we went to an all-night breakfast restaurant, and kissed some more. We were both exhausted, but we wanted to stay. At 3 a.m., after I’d started to nod off during our conversations, we decided to go. When I put her in the cab and said goodbye, she kissed me one more time, saying “17!”, which was apparently how many times we’d kissed. And how many times she had ever been kissed, in her whole life.

Again, two more days and we were out at the movies. This time was after work – the company couldn’t figure out where the floods were going to be, so they opened and closed school centers pretty much at random – so we met up at a mainstream Cineplex in my area. We sat on a couch in the back of the theater and kissed through the whole movie (no waste, the movie was “In Time” with Justin Timberlake), and kept exploring. She was incredibly passionate. At the end of the movie, though, it was too late to go anywhere. I wanted her to come home with me, she wasn’t sure if she should. She did, but only once I promised we wouldn’t do anything new. That was tough, but fun, that night. Less fun, she left at four a.m.

It took some time before she would spend the night. We weren’t going to sleep together (though eventually she relaxed on that – thank goodness!), but even so, I wanted to spend the whole night together. Every second day we met up for a couple weeks, playing favorite YouTube clips for each other (she likes “Happy Tree Friends”, which I still find a bit odd) and sharing stories and, of course, making out.

A couple weeks later she went to the hospital for exploratory surgery. I bought flowers after work and showed up, but she wouldn’t let me in. I stood outside with the flowers and, just for just a couple of minutes, let myself cry. I was worried, and didn’t feel like I could do anything. Yes, it was too soon in our relationship, but I really needed to be with her, to know she was okay. Instead I got our friends to write her get-well postcards, and dropped off a stack with flowers at her apartment after she got out.

We went away a couple weeks later by bus, when Bangkok was officially shutdown for the floods and all of our friends were fleeing for the beaches. On the way south we talked about dating other people, talked about not dating other people, talked about being past that. On the way south we made out furiously, and it was a lot of fun, even though we had to be really discrete so our friends in the next bench couldn’t see. We were exhausted when we arrived.

We stayed together, finally, really slept together in Krabi. But beyond the usual first-bloom romance, there was an edge – Amp told me how serious her heart condition really was, that elevating her heartrate could cause a heart attack, that the doctor gave her six months to live without surgery. I remember feeling the shock of it, and putting aside any of my questions about the relationship, and deciding my job right then was just to make sure she made it through her surgery okay, no matter what.

The rest of the story, in overview…

In January I was spending my days as a new manager and my nights on the couch in her surgery room. She’d come through well, but I couldn’t shake the image of her coming out of surgery so tiny and frail, the feeling of absolute impotence while she was being operated on. I wanted to protect her, but there was nothing to be done, so I came and stayed while she slept. Something small, all I could do.

She got out quickly, was soon able to walk around again like normal, and travel again. We spent the next months working furiously at our jobs – turns out I wasn’t very good at being a manager – and taking whatever time we could to travel around Bangkok. We spent a weekend at Amphawa, a beautiful example of older Thai culture with canals instead of streets, we spent a weekend at a six-star resort because of an amazing voucher, we spent a weekend away at Ayuthaya, the ancient town, and a weekend at Lopburi, the monkey town… you get the idea.

It was far from perfect. I cooked dinner on Valentine’s Day, a pasta cream sauce with shrimp (Amp’s favourite) and onions (minced super, super finely) only to have her spend 45 minutes picking out all the little onions (it was not only green, but all vegetables, that she refused to eat). She was upset when I had lunch with a female coworker, when I was flirtatious with women in general. Some of that was a clash of cultures; most of it was me not really knowing proper boundaries. (Remember the bit about naivete at the beginning? We’ll just go with that here again. It’s kind.)

And I was stressed. My job wasn’t going well for the first few months, and when I started to learn how to do better, the center air conditioning broke and our students refused to study. I kept getting more and more behind, and my boss asked me to step down, to go back to being a teacher in another center and quit management. I couldn’t do it, so I quit.

Amp and I already had a trip planned to Chongqing, China, and we went anyway – at least this way I didn’t need to take paid time off. It was a great trip, and I was even more excited because I’d decided to work in Beijing for the next year. Amp was going to take advantage of her Australian visa then come join me.

She didn’t.

Rather, she did, but not permanently. After a couple of difficult months apart, she flew from Sydney to Beijing for Christmas, and we spent an amazing month together. We fought, as we always have, but we traveled and had fun and it was great coming back to the apartment and coming home to her. But then she left, and we hoped she could come out in a few months and find work in Beijing so we could be together. Without a native English-speaker’s passport, though, teaching was essentially off the table. Other jobs would be even tougher to get. We fought often over the next few months, fighting for what we both wanted, but always making it through. In June she came out again, and again it was a great month. July and August were tougher, and when we decided that we couldn’t be together in Beijing, we decided to move back to Thailand together at the end of my contract.

Meeting up again in October was amazing, knowing we actually had a chance to be together long term. We were both starting to learn more about the relationship and heal from some of the rough patches of the previous months. I’d read a book by the Friels on relationships, and we started to apply some of the principles. I began to understand where I’d overstepped the boundaries of a respectful relationship with my female friendships, and we began to move past some of our arguments. It’s been a slow process, but it began that fall.

Our early days in Chiang Mai have a sort of Polaroid gloss. We spent the first week looking for an apartment, riding around with the two of us on a little rented scooter stopping methodically into search and every apartment building we saw. When we finally saw our current apartment, we were exhausted at the end of a long day, and the apartment was catching the last rays of sun setting behind Doi Suthep with a gigantic picture window. We’d found our home.

Every day I worked trying to develop online income and Amp applied for local jobs, but every night we explored the city. We went to markets, karaoke, bowling and cheap restaurants. By December we both had work, though it wasn’t too lucrative, and we were making it. I felt like we were in a movie about the early days of success for some company founders. (Sometimes I still feel that way.)

In January I flew my parents out for a Thailand vacation, something Amp and I had been planning for months with money I pulled from my old retirement account. It was their first time to meet, but they knew a lot about each other. We traveled to southern Thailand, back to Amphawa, up to northern Thailand and over to Cambodia. My parents were in awe of everything, and quickly adopted Amp as a daughter.

I bought a motorcycle at the end of our vacation, when we were in Bangkok. The engine froze while we were in traffic, and Amp decided she never wanted to ride together again. I was devastated. But over the next few months she was a little more open to short rides, and we travelled slowly and carefully to a few new places, driving on top of Doi Suthep and to the forests near Chiang Dao. She began to enjoy it.

The next few months we worked hard. In May I went on a motorcycle trip with two good friends, Lee Baker and Johan Pellsater, and when I came back I wanted to ride more. Amp and I spent every weekend of June on a motorcycle visiting resorts around the north. In July I had to return to Colorado for a funeral and a wedding, but in August we started up the traveling again. And we kept it up in September and October – every week when we were in Chiang Mai, we tried to go visit a new place. Sometimes our friends came with us, sometimes it was just the two of us, sometimes it was one night and sometimes it was four; it was always what we needed. We continued to get closer, to build memories.

In November we flew to the US to spend Thanksgiving and the rest of the holidays with my family. It was the first time I’d ever introduced a girlfriend to my extended family, but it went well; aunts, uncles and cousins universally agreed she was a keeper. Since we’ve returned home I think she keeps in closer touch with my family than I do, which to be honest is great, since my communication gaps always led to vague fears that I’d experienced some catastrophe.

We keep up our frequent travels now, and want to continue. This summer is the final countdown to the motorcycle trip we’ve been planning, and we’re both really excited about the days of riding through forests and mountains and the nights spent in our tent. We’re excited about making even more memories that we’ll keep together forever.

“When you’re finished in Thailand, I need a partner.” The Pan-American highway ride, from Alaska to Argentina, began with nine words. AR and I had ridden to Cambodia and through northern Thailand together, sharing a sense of adventure and romantic travel ideals. Our first Christmas in Thailand we’d kayaked to camp on a tiny little coastal island, where we sang Christmas carols around his tiny battery-lit tree. In Angkor Wat, we’d taken turns posing in a brimmed hat in the ancient temple, our own Indiana Jones pictures. We’d shared completely impractical, improbable adventures, and loved them. And he had an idea for another.

“I finally bought my new motorcycle,” he wrote from Canada, “I need a bad-ass partner… we go south in Mexico, and you can finally teach me some of that goofy dancing you love…we would keep going down into Guatemala…El Salvador to Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. But to stop there would be just silly, you see? Colombia is just a little further, and then there are just so many options…we end at the southern tip of Chile…Let me know what you think.”

Reading his letter changed my life. I wanted to go, not least because of the enchanting  hand-drawn map. He and I were born for another century, but we would make the most of our own. I agreed. I would ride a motorcycle to the bottom of South America; I just wasn’t sure when or how.

“How” took two years of work. I was an English teacher when The Letter came. I figured that the whole trip required three months of decent riding and, even camping and eating at taco stands, would cost about $10,000. But that was more than half my salary.

 

I quit teaching, moving to Chiang Mai to work online, to start a business that would allow me to save for the trip, or at least allow travel and work at the same time. It worked. And I was also lucky enough to spend time with my old college friend, Chavez, and another digital nomad, JP.

I tested my dream, spending three weeks motorcycling the length of Thailand, confirming that, yes, I loved that lifestyle. I also asked my long-term girlfriend, Nin’ta, to join. Rather than a 3-month tornado, I decided to spread the trip over 9-12 months, and spend time working along the way.

We didn’t leave for another year, though I was very tempted to start early and alone when I first rode my KLR650, the one I purchased for the trip that summer. I sat at a stop light one day pointed south, thinking, “my laptop is on the back, I have clothes with me: I could leave right now, just keep driving south till the land runs out.” (My grandmother, a major anchor in my life, had just passed away, so perhaps I can be forgiven for wanting to run away.) My story would have been very different if I had kept driving that day, but I’m glad I didn’t, glad I was able to share my travels with Nin’ta, even when we were at odds, and glad to have had the trip that I did.

For the beginning, Chavez and another friend, RJ, decided to join. Chavez was the one who decided that there was really no point in starting the trip from Colorado, when the road started up in Alaska. His logic was unassailable; Alaska seemed like a small add-on to an already large trip. Nothing wrong with an extra couple weeks of travel – it would be quick, right?

In the end, the Pan American didn’t take just one year. Or two. I’m writing now 3 years after we started, and only off the bike for a few months.
We met many riders along the way with the Tierra del Fuego (southern Argentina) goal. Only a handful made it all the way. None took as long as we did. Instead of trying to get to the bottom as quickly as possible, we lived in countries along the way, spending months without even starting the motorcycle, getting to know foreign cities as home.

I’ve forgotten so many details from the trip, I know there are people we met who are lost in time, and texture to the days and stories I won’t be able to recreate, not even from the thousands of photos and the old journal entries. (And even those are less than they should have been, due to a journal getting lost by FedEx Colombia – more on that frustration later). But for my later self, for the kids we may one day have, or for anyone out there who wants to make the same trip, even if it’s just by armchair, here’s my Pan-American travel story.

Dedicated with love to AR, who is about to start the Pan-American trip he inspired me to ride, and to Nin’ta, my partner in our crazy, adventurous life.

I’ve decided my next step involves passive income. This summer was tough, financially. And it’s still tough. I’ve been looking at finances and while I’m still floating, I need to land some serious work over the next few weeks to keep that state. At the same time, when I ask myself what I really want, the first answer is always travel, adventure — things that don’t come easily while working.

I’m incredibly grateful for the work I’ve had over the last few years. Looking back at the beginning of my freelancing and the goals from that time, this has given me so much more freedom and financial reward than I could have expected four years ago. That we were able to live well all the way through Latin America while staying in decent hotels and beautiful apartments — I’m incredibly grateful.

But I’ve also known that coming back to Chiang Mai wasn’t an endgame goal, just a stop along the way. I’m glad now to have a home and stability, and looking for a balance, but I also know that my current situation is too tenuous; I want to be able to travel for a few weeks, or take off some time to help with my family, and not feel like I’m risking my financial future. The only way I can see to achieve that is to create passive income.

A few years ago I read a great article on that subject on the Steve Pavlina blog. The guy has some weird ideas about some areas (his open relationship series isn’t for me), but he does have some great psychology regarding starting a passive income source, so I’m going to be following along with his series on creating your first passive income stream. I don’t know exactly what that will be, but I do know the first step: creating a goal.

Passive income goal: $100 per month in passive income by April 13th, 2019, my 35th birthday. Stretch goal: $1000 per month in passive income by August of 2019, one year from now.

Interestingly, looking back on my old posts as I imported them from wanderlustadventurer, I was struck that my freelance business started almost the exact same way.

Amp joined me in one of my regular coffee shops, and laughed as she told me that the staff thought I always looked “so serious”. I’ve caught sight of myself in windows while I work, and they’re right – my neutral expression when I’m working is intense, furrowed, and definitely unfriendly.

That was a few years ago, and I’ve been working on being more approachable since. On Saturday, I had several random strangers approach me and start up conversations, and I thought, “Win!” Today I realized I may be too approachable.

Sitting at a small outdoor mall watching people walk past, I was surprised when I Chinese woman came very close and asked me where I was from. A group surrounded her, from little round-faced children to older retirees, and they seemed so damned excited about my answer. The leader showed me a question on her phone, asking me to help them with a game. I said “sure, I guess” – and the group actually clapped.

They told me to repeat a short phrase in Chinese, and with my year of living there, copying the sounds was easy. They clapped again! This is great! I have no idea what’s happening!

Then they motioned me to follow them, and I walked to the front of the shopping area, where I saw no fewer than five high-end cameras with oversize fuzzy microphones all pointed at me, recording, and the woman asked me to repeat the phrase I had just “learned”.

But… I can parrot almost anything with a decent ear for language, but my memory for language is essentially nill. I don’t think them recording me saying, “I don’t remember,” in English was quite what they were hoping for. But it’s what they got.

Gamely, they still gave me a keepsake… keychain? Window pull? Curtain tassel? A keepsake. We’ll just call it a keepsake.

Goal! I was just researching some info on fitness, and opened up the settings of my food tracker (SHYE, See How You Eat) to make a note, when I saw the goal I’d typed in months ago: 34″ waist size at 200 lbs. When I downloaded this app, I weighed about 225 lbs (down from my all time high of 243 lbs), and had a waist of somewhere in the 38 inch range. Since then I’ve been steadily losing weight, but like most goals, I like to shift the goal post as I go. Last week I noted with some discouragement that my waist was still 2 inches more than I’d like, and I recently decided I’d like to lose an additional 15 lbs. I’m hard on myself. I was discouraged.

But opening up this app, I realized how far I’ve come: my waist measurement was 34 inches last week, and my weight is now below 195 lbs. Without even realizing it, I’d already passed by my old goal.

Today I awoke in Bangkok. Getting here hasn’t been easy, but it feels great to be back. Last night after arriving we went out for a quick snack from 7-11, and walked away with spicy fried basil for less than two dollars; it was delicious. I walked down the hall this morning and saw flower covered vines growing across the back parking lot wall, carelessly guarding the colorful scooters parked beneath, the kind of careless beauty of the untended plants here. And today we’ll be visiting King Kong to get our fill of charcoal grilled meat… it’s good to be back.

A restaurant on the west coast, long considered one of the best in the US, would serve only a 13-course fixed menu meal, with each course just a few bites. Asked why, they replied that unless the guests were left wishing for “just one more bite” of each dish, they had given the guest too much — because the last bite wouldn’t have been fully enjoyed.

Santiago and Valparaiso are our last bites of Latin America, and already we’re planning our return. This morning we both got blurry-eyed, knowing we were leaving our last apartment of the whole trip. We’ve spent the afternoon in Valparaiso taking dozens of pictures from all angles, and fully enjoying ourselves — and wanting more.

I love the colors of the life here, the constant vibrance of the streets, the street performers dancing or playing drums, the bustle of men in suits walking to their cafes or families heading to parks. This is the rhythm of Latin America, the rhythm my life has taken on for the last two and a half years, and I’ll miss it.

We arrived in Santiago a week ago and checked into our AirBnB, our apartment home for this stay. When we were planning our Patagonia ride we scheduled just 2 weeks for the time down and back, and planned on meeting a friend from Buenos Aires tango classes who was on another road trip near Santiago. We arrived 4 days late, and so had to rush on our first day to meet up. After checking in and showering, we rushed through the city to a sushi bar in the Bella Vista neighborhood.

First impressions were mixed; coming from the plaza, the surrounding neighborhood was mostly shut down on the Sunday evening, and dodgy. But we transitioned into the Bellas Artie’s district, and suddenly found ourselves in a hipster area, with second wave coffee shops crowded next to vinyl stores and tiny Thai restaurants.

Seeing our friend again was a wonderful finish to the trip, sharing a bottle of wine and a meal and conversation for a few hours to celebrate that, for us and for this trip, this was an ending.

A sense of unreality has pervaded since. On Monday we walked the city, but with the bike in a nearby parking garage, everything was normal except the lack of conversation about where we would ride next. And the sense of relief: driving on the highways in Chile was a little crazier than expected, and both of us had been fighting a sense of doom for the last day or our trip, worried about dying at the very end. That became stronger when we witnessed a car crash in front of the coffee shop we were in, and when Amp was nearly hit by a dolly falling from a Coke delivery truck, both in the space of ten minutes.

—-

We packed her and wrapped her and set her on a pallet, and the forklift took her away. I’ll miss my bike for the next couple weeks, but even more, I miss knowing that I’m about to ride somewhere new and exciting. I bought the bike just for this trip, and even though I don’t know when I’ll do another lining ride, I can’t bear to think of selling it right now. Even shipping it hurt a little…