mixing memory and desire (2)

On the coach this evening, travelling back from a church event in some ulu campsite in the north of Singapore, looking out into the darkness of near-empty streets, taking in the soft glow of the streetlamps, i felt almost like a tourist in a foreign land, cocooned in the cosy confines of a chartered tour bus with my fellow travellers, all of us disparate individuals yet somehow brought together and united by a common purpose.

It occurred to me how long it's been since i've been on an overseas tour. i was reminded of those long overnight trips in Morocco, travelling from city to city on the public buses with the wide open plains on one side of the road, and the distant mountains on the other. The call of muezzin in the sunset as we passed some remote village along the way. The feeling that inside the bus, all was safety and predictability, while outside was the cold and dark, and dangers unknown and yet somehow vaguely apprehended.

i want to travel again. It's been so long since i've gone anywhere different, that doesn't speak English, where i can feel not quite at home, and comfortable being not quite at home because there's no reason why things should be otherwise. It's been too long since i've felt like a real foreigner in a culture i don't recognise at all, that requires me to get out of myself and make radical adjustments to the way i eat and talk and live, if only for a week or two.

Wanderlust. Perhaps at the end of the year, i'll finally find time and space to go somewhere. It doesn't have to be far from here. As long as English is not the first language, and as long as it's not a developed country. i really should start planning now.
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