EPILOGUE:
Jason and I hugged out our good byes at the BC family hostel, the vietnamese kids we had been living with for the past 3 days. I had sold my broken bike, the puny 100cc Honda Win that somehow managed to get me 1000 miles from Saigon to Hanoi. Nano gave Jason a drawing she had made of us from the day before at the hospital. We were pretty excited about how dang cute we looked. Hopefully it’s still treasured somewhere.
We threw our heavy bags into the trunk of the cab and hopped in. the cab took off immediately. We looked at each other, realizing that our travels were over. from here on out we’d bee hopping in and out of planes until we were home. We both got stuck in our own heads trapped in our own thoughts and became silent for a while. I was thinking a lot about how much Jason and I have done together, and how hilarious that of all people, this person I hadn’t ever been very close to was the one person I’ve spent more time with than anyone else in my life (so far). Immediately after that thought followed a very bizarre realization, as obvious as it presently is, that I hadn’t been home yet to tell everyone of what India did to me; how it opened something huge inside of me, the things I saw, the people that moved me, the smell that had now stuck in my mind forever, the kindness that was everywhere that I’d been blind to until then. I was overwhelmed of how much I had to seemingly add to myself.
Arriving at the airport we took ages to find our plane, and had a 36 hour journey home ahead of us, so really there was no rush getting on this plane. Once we got in, sat down, I plugged in to my iPod and listened to the same things I had been listening to for 3 months. I closed my eyes. It was going to be a long night. I’m going home.
When I woke up we were landing for a 12 hour transfer in Narita, Japan. Neither of us felt like we had to energy to go explore this tiny town, and we didn’t we could even if we ended up wanting to. Getting off the plane I needed the washroom like never before and like it was nobody’s business, so I bolted to the first toilet I found. My first look into the washroom I was blown away. the way everything worked, everything looked, from the toilets to the faucets everything looked 20 years ahead of our time. Supposedly that was just my experience from being in India and South East Asia, but as I began waking up more and more everything around me seemed to be so... futuristic.
We went through customs and asked how much the cheapest visa was, and right away we were given a free 3 month visa. They told me to see what I can. We decided that we had enough energy to explore.
We saw nobody on the streets. It was the first cold weather I’d experienced since earlier that year in spring. After walking for an hour in the future, cool cars and buildings and clean roads, I managed to spot a forest full of old trees and what looked like pink blossoms on the branches. It was so dewy, and the air was so fresh compared to everywhere else we’d been, and there were rock paths along the ponds so you could sit in the middle and listen to everything around you. It was so cool but we didn’t have the time to stay too long. On the end of the trail we found ourselves out in the open standing inferno to a huge pagoda. Inside the pagoda were ancient drawings of some epic tale about warriors, strange creatures and gods fighting each other. We went to the top of the building and found a HUGE blue angry god yelling at us. Of all of Thailand and Vietnam it was the most alive and terrifying statue I had seen. I felt like it wasting me down and screaming at me, his eyes looking through me.
I always look back on how quiet it was up there. Not a SINGLE SOUND, it was music to my ears. After getting out of the stare with this statue I turned around and saw all of Narita from the open balcony. Right then I began having that amazing feeling again. That something huge was growing inside of me again. I felt high, in the sense I was my body and beyond. I was so excited that this, Japan, this extra chapter in my trip was happening. That there was MORE!
We were running out of time so we had to head back, but I came to learn that within myself, there are a million things to open, to let grow, and that my favourite way of doing that was seeing the world with my own eyes.
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