I had been living in Thailand for over a year and I felt in many ways like a local. Even as I traveled I had a home base where my belongings were safely stored, I could bond and converse with people I met about the area where I lived, and the customs and way of life in Southeast Asia felt very familiar to me. All that was about to change.

I moved out, packed up or gave away all my belongings, and began my trip now carrying everything with me. I had to adjust to not having the option of leaving valuable or bulky items behind and to making sure I could easily carry everything I packed. I tried to be strategic but I still ended up with more stuff than I expected. There’s a delicate balance you have to find between the bare essentials and some necessary comforts that will make the trip the most enjoyable without breaking your back.

Once I had my stuff sorted I began my trip with some friends on Koh Tao, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. This was a great transition for me because we were still in Thailand, which I know and love, but this was not my rural town. We were as far from that traditional way of life as we could be in Thailand, we were in tourist land. When I spoke Thai(the little that I know) the locals were surprised to see that a foreigner knew any. I also had that sensation when I saw other tourists that I recognized them, but really it was just the first time in a while that I was seeing so many white people around. Toto, I don’t think we’re in Sisaket anymore. I had left behind the familiar faces that knew me and now, to the locals, I was simply another western tourist on vacation. It actually didn’t take that long for me to adjust and enjoy island life with a beer on the beach. When my friends and I met people and explained that we were teachers on vacation, I was promptly reminded by my friend that I am, in fact, unemployed. So I gave in and let the fun-employment period begin!

Relaxing on Koh Tao was like ripping a band-aid off. What is work again? One of the beauties of traveling is the flexibility you have with each day; there is no set schedule, no structure, no requirements. I had some structure as my friends and I took our course to get our SCUBA Open Water Certification but in our free time we had but to choose which beach to go to. It was a bit of a foreign feeling after a year of work and the lack of structure can sometimes be problematic but this would be my life for the next three months!

So when I arrived in India, my daily life became deciding what activities to do that day or the next. As a traveler I try to do some of the pre-packaged tours or sightseeing and also some independent exploring. I try to stay active and busy but it’s important to schedule in some free time to relax and recharge as well. I can feel myself getting back into that groove of traveling and making each day a new adventure.

The life of a traveler also means the amount of new people you meet increases exponentially. I have been called a social butterfly before; I’m the person that takes a half an hour to leave a party because I say goodbye to every person there and end up in a whole new conversation as I do(a behavior I inherited from my father). So as I travel I strike up a conversation with pretty much anyone next to me. Being a traveler, all these new introductions are fleeting, like at a party, you hop from conversation to conversation and each one contributes to the experience as a whole, with each new destination comes more interactions that last only as long as your paths cross.

It’s been two weeks since I left Sisaket and began my extended travel but it feels like so much longer. I have already done so much, met so many people and my way of life has changed so drastically that living and working in Sisaket seems like another lifetime. It was another life and it came to a close, and this traveler life has only just begun.