nomadgirl

My seer, a deeply religious woman who reads my innermost thoughts and voices my fears, told me last November that I mustn’t even think about cramming any extra learning into my busy life. Or more accurately, jamming yet another concern into my already-crowded brain.

“Forego,” she advised me. “At least until January.” Not a week after she saw this in the cards, the short course I’d signed up and paid for, was cancelled.

I met up with her again last week. Torn apart inside by a series of unfortunate events, I was desperate to consult her on matters of the heart (or what was left of it). Without my even asking (higher learning was the farthest from my mind), she told me: “Learn the ropes. In small doses and with tiny steps, you should hone your craft. It’s time.”

The course I’d considered only last November doesn’t even seem relevant to me anymore. It won’t get me where I want to be at the end of 2007. In its place, I’ve identified one or two opportunities that combine two powerful drivers: the need to create, and the itch to travel.

If I do these things (I shan’t say, I don’t want to jinx it), I’d have hit at least three birds with one stone…or crossed off a quite a few things on my list.

Eerily enough, in doing These Things and bringing about their natural consequences, I’d be watching the fortune teller’s other predictions – the ones having to do with matters of the heart – come to life.

After months of wistful planning and poring, dreamy-eyed, over the travel section of the Straits Times, I’m finally doing it. Booked a solo trip to see the temples in Siem Reap.

I’ve traveled alone before, taken a 45-minute ferry ride to a beach in Indonesia. That was playing safe, setting the parameters of my comfort zone just a few inches further out. Like a little kid venturing away from his mother at a supermarket (so long as he sees her out of the corner of his eye, he’s ok, and not lost). So the mini-breaks to Bintan don’t really count.

For 2 days, I will search out the kindness of strangers, and learn gratitude for the goodwill of other solo travelers. I will foster quick and necessary chumminess with tuktuk drivers hired to accompany me into the unknown, and follow my nose and the grumble of my belly to crowded holes in the wall selling steaming noodles for a dollar a bowl.

After months of the familiar, I need something new to look at, something surprising and soul-jolting. I haven’t really been “seeing” for a long time now.

I’ve just put one of those French audio books on my iPod. I’ll practice my French on cab rides, on my walkabouts downtown, and on my flight to Cambodia tomorrow.

Old people in Cambodia still speak a bit of French, and one of the owners of the guesthouse I’ll be staying at is a Frenchman named Thierry. Practice makes perfect.