It’s hard to know where to start, to be quite frank. Almost four months have passed since I finished my core surgical training and out of those four months I have been traveling abroad for just shy of ten weeks.
Taking time out to travel was something that my fiancée and I had been discussing many moons before we actually made the dream a reality. Thankfully, the combination of a February ST3 start and the accumulation of enough savings had set us up reasonably well.
Now, just over two months into traveling, we have managed to cover decent ground in South and Central America and the Asian leg is currently well underway. We’ve meandered through markets, salivated over street food, ogled over ancient opulence, clambered into caves, hiked up hilltops and snowy mountains, and poured a pint or three with some wonderful people along the way. It’s been a journey and a half and it’s only when I look back in reminiscence that I am able to truly comprehend the scale of how much we’ve actually seen and experienced.
We recently completed our visit to India in the space of just two weeks and now, having traversed the Indian ocean to South East Asia, we have elected for a slightly slower pace in Da Nang, a city on the Eastern coast of Vietnam where kilometres of golden white sand are awash with warm oceanic inflow from the South China sea. Our hotel resides a mere one hundred metres away from My Khê beach, the “go-to”, yet peaceful beach destination in Da Nang, with an ocean view from the room’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Lush might be an understatement.
Unfortunately, as it stands, the weather is awful, with storms lashing the coastline every minute of each day. Nevertheless, we braved the weather and ventured outside during a temporary lull in the dismal rainfall today. Having scoffed down some vietnamese “vegetarian/not sure if it’s vegetarian” food, we decided to extend our stroll to the waterfront. And quelle libération! The waves pounded the shoreline, powerfully coaxing our feet away from land as we buried our toes in the sand, the wind whipping our hair and covering our faces with a fine sheen of salt spray. Wearing just swim shorts, a t-shirt, and a poncho, it felt as though there was no such concept as “wet”; the rain, sea and I were one.
I’ve not had much compulsion to write whilst I’ve been away, principally because I’ve relished the present moment over my phone screen on which I would otherwise tap-tap-tap away my thoughts for subsequent publication in my personal journal. Many a time have I considered doing so, but I’ve resorted to the somewhat vintage authenticity of pen and paper to offload my thoughts. I do, however, think that it may be useful to record each place that we have visited and scribe an account of what we saw with salient hints of how not to befall the same fate that we encountered.
Yet, it’s far more enjoyable to write without feeling beholden to the pressure of continuous content production. Now, where’s the fun in that?
Vasudev Zaver 