I don’t remember who noticed it first, but something definitely felt off as we approached the car.
We’d just finished a celebratory send-off dinner before I went off to Thailand to teach English for a year. We had just enough time to head to the airport for my flight.
Where the passenger-side window should have been, there was a gap. The window was in a million tiny pieces on the ground. I looked into the car to where my backpack with my laptop and camera had been. Nothing. Nothing in the backseat either, which was previously home to my suitcase, packed with everything else I needed for a year abroad.
I still had my passport and money in my purse, but everything else was gone. Clothes, laptop, a framed family photo from my sister’s wedding… none of it was there.
Later, we learned that it had only been 9 minutes after we had left the car - around the time we were rolling up to the bar and ordering cocktails - that the thieves smashed the window and threw my bags into the back of a pickup truck. The theft was caught on surveillance video, but nobody was ever caught. I found out later that I was one of tens of thousands of victims of auto burglary in San Francisco.
Stunned, I tried to think of a rational reason for why my bags were missing, while my brother paced up and down the street, yelling expletives. I couldn’t come up with one that didn’t involve something bad. When my mind settled around the truth that someone had broken into the car and stolen all my luggage for the year, just three hours before my flight, I sat down on the curb and cried.
* * *
HERE
Living abroad was a long-time dream of mine. It was something I knew I not only wanted to do, but needed to do for myself and for my career.
Junior high geography class birthed a curiosity about other places and a desire to see them first-hand. There was something about the photos of people in colorful dress, at the time so “foreign” and “exotic,” that made me want to learn more about other people in other places. A high school trip to France, Italy, and Greece and a college semester abroad in Scotland didn’t placate my wandering eye; instead, they heightened the impulse to go everywhere and see everything, right now.
Study abroad seemed the perfect career path to help others learn about the world, and themselves. But in order to break into this niche, I had be a model of my own beliefs. This meant I had to go abroad for an extended period of time.
It was what I wanted, but being away from everything familiar for a year was terrifying. Maybe instead of helping my career, future employers would see it as a year I spent vacationing. Maybe I would hate whatever country I chose. I would be all on my own; who would help me when things got rough?
I mulled the idea over for what felt like forever. Meanwhile, pangs of jealousy flared up every time I heard a friend or acquaintance was going abroad. Why couldn’t I do that? Wait, why wasn’t I doing it? If they could, there was no conceivable reason why I couldn’t as well.
After a year of letting the idea stew, I got tired of seeing what felt like everyone around me doing what I wanted to do. I stopped making excuses for myself and finally applied to a program for teaching English in Thailand. Only when I got accepted did reality began to set in. Did I really have any idea what I was signing up for?
I ran through every worst-case scenario I could imagine. I turn out to be a horrendous teacher. I don’t make any friends. I end up missing home too much. I am what you would call a picky eater; what if I don’t like the food and starve? The whole thing will just be too hard and I’ll crack under the pressure. Was I up for all this?
To compound this inner monologue, other people had already begun to doubt that I would actually follow through with my plan.
“You won’t do it,” an old roommate taunted me. The only retort I could offer up was a whiny “Yes, I will!” while my inner stubborn child muttered “I’ll show you.” Family members didn’t understand why I wanted to go live on the other side of the world in some random country where I didn’t know anyone, didn’t speak the language, and (probably) didn’t eat the food. “How safe is it over there?” “If you really want to just live somewhere else so bad, why not go to Europe or somewhere more familiar?”
I countered each of their worries with research. Thailand didn’t have a State Department travel warning. I was going with a program that had a lot of in-country support. I had travel insurance. I wouldn’t be the sole foreigner at my school. You can’t argue with facts!
Even though I was trying to convince others that this was not a foolhardy plan, their doubts compounded my own fears. Did everyone else know something I didn’t? Perhaps this wasn’t such a great idea. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for such an undertaking after all.
My solution to the thoughts and anxieties clouding my head was to buy everything I could possibly need for every imaginable situation. If I did that everything would be fine. I would have a tangible answer to every fear and doubt that reared its ugly head.
“What if you get Bangkok belly?” No problem, I’ve got anti-diarrheal medicine, probiotics, and Pepto-Bismol.
“There’s a good chance you’ll be a terrible teacher.” How can I, when I’ve brought these teaching materials along with my new TEFL certification.
“You know you’re gonna miss home, right?” Sure, but these family photos and mementos will make sure it doesn’t hurt so bad.
I couldn’t stop negative thoughts from bubbling to the surface, but at least I was prepared. I had all of this stuff to shield myself from them.
THERE
For a smooth transition leaving the country, I decided to stop over in San Francisco to visit my brother and his partner. There was a major bluegrass music festival in town and there are ample flights out of SFO to Asia, so why not?
We capped off my final days in the USA and celebrated my impending journey with a nice dinner at the famous Zuni Cafe. My flight was at 1 a.m., which meant an 11 p.m. arrival to the airport was reasonable.
For convenience’s sake, we decided to go straight to the airport from dinner. We threw all of my luggage into his red VW Golf and headed downtown. After a delicious meal, we headed back to the car to rush to the airport. That’s when we saw the missing passenger-side window and the glass in tiny bits on the ground.
I stood there staring at the gaping hole for a minute. Rather than putting on a strong front, I decided to lean into the shock and the sting of the loss.
“Why would someone do this??” I wailed as I squatted on the curb. My breath came in spurts. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I thought about pinching myself to see whether this was real or not. It was indeed real, and now it was time to do something about it.
I was scheduled to be on a twelve-hour flight across the Pacific Ocean in less than three hours, but it was clear I would not be getting on a plane that night.
On the drive home, the crisp night air rushed in through the open window, drying my tears and calming me down -- but only briefly. I sat in the living room and tried to recall every item that had been in my luggage to fill out the insurance claim. I had spent so long curating these things, and they had seemed so important at the time, so why couldn’t I remember what they were now?
The mental exhaustion of the past several hours eventually caught up with me, and I slept another night in San Francisco, this time in borrowed pajamas.
Despite my best efforts, everything I had brought with me -- the mementos, the teaching materials, the medicine -- did not prepare or prevent me from losing it. We spent the next day furiously running across the city buying clothes and toiletries, and making the fastest sale the Burlingame Apple Store has ever seen. With enough replacements to at least settle into my new life, I was finally able to leave San Francisco and make my way to Thailand two days later.
By then, I was days late to my new teacher orientation. When I finally showed up, I took a cab to downtown Bangkok with some fellow teachers. I remember giving them the short explanation of my late arrival: “Someone stole all my stuff.”
They were in shock, and I distinctly remember one girl saying, “Oh my god, I would not have gotten on the plane. I would’ve just gone home.”
To me, that didn’t make any sense. Of course, it sucked and would continue to suck, but was I really going to let that stop me from doing this thing I had been dying to do for a couple years now? I probably would’ve moped at home for a couple days and then wondered to myself, “Why am I not in Thailand right now?”
It was a major stumbling block that got my trip off to a rocky start, but that’s all it was: a roadblock to overcome and move past. It never occurred to me not to go; I had worked too hard for it and spent too many hours dreaming of being in Thailand that giving up before I even got there was not an option for me.
Though I would continue to feel the loss throughout the year every time I reached for a favorite pair of shorts or necklace that I no longer possessed, I was physically uninjured. I had renter’s insurance, the payout from which helped to fund a six-week backpacking trip through Southeast Asia during the holiday break from teaching.
It became more of an annoyance than anything else. It’s a cliche, but it was just stuff after all. Stuff is replaceable. I had tried to buy a sense of security, but after I lost it, it became clear that I couldn’t purchase my way into feeling safe.
HERE AGAIN
After keeping a simple blog chronicling my daily life in Thailand, I knew I eventually wanted to start a travel website. I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited a variety of places through teaching or studying abroad. I wanted to share those experiences and what I’ve learned along the way, like how to navigate Thai cultural norms in a professional setting, or the overwhelming feeling you get from teachers in rural South Africa welcoming you to their school with a Xitsonga song and dance.
However, there are enough blogs out there filled with "The Top 10 Things You MUST DO in Southeast Asia" and other tired listicles. The world doesn't need another blog like that, and I don't want to write it anyway.
This won’t be a blow-by-blow of every trip I take. Nor will it be a regurgitation of the most popular tourist spots in any given place. Though I will let you know where you should grab a good meal, my aim is to dig down and get to know a place beyond the usual tourist spots and the best places to party. My post-grad school brain probably wouldn’t even allow me to write anything about a place without attempting to examine it through a critical sociocultural lens. It wouldn’t be fair or accurate to write about Cape Town and only focus on the grandeur of Camps Bay without discussing the lingering effects of apartheid on townships like Langa, just ten miles on the other side of Table Mountain.
Just as making my way to Thailand was rife with obstacles, the “takeoff” was also an issue in the creation and launch of this website. Once again, the doubting side of my brain likes to throw bumps in the road that slow down progress towards my goal. What if people don't want to read what I have to say? Or worse, what if I don't have anything interesting to say? (Oh, hello, imposter syndrome).
This is my “passion project,” and by publishing it, I’m exposing it - and by extension, myself - to criticism. My my thoughts are vulnerable in a way they haven’t been before. And yet, here I am, spending hours learning Squarespace to get the site to look just the way I want it to, and typing up thoughts, as silly as they may seem when written out.
Like the last time I did something big and scary, I do not plan on letting my own insecurities and fears stop me from pursuing it. So now, I’m taking off and pressing “publish.”
Big ups to my brother, Chris Roberts (@cbloggy) for being my editor.