Bad day with a Good View

A lot of solo travel is a bad day with a good view.

There are more bad days than good ones, and they're all happening somewhere that's never heard of you. If you're crying, you're crying alone in your room. Or muffled in a dorm with five other people.

Or on the truly bad days, in public, on full display to a thousand strangers who don't speak your language.

So why burn annual leave on this? Why pay money to be lost and sick and crying in a train station?

Here's my version of why.

You know exactly who you are at home. It's your bed, the stain on the sheet, the teddy the ex gave you, two books in tow. Your parents' dining table with more food than you need. Your friend's cocktail made the exact way you like it.

Solo travel plucks you off that bed and drops you somewhere the money is funny and the alphabet isn't yours.

It's alienating. The first day is mostly fear dressed up as sightseeing.

You photograph a temple you're too nervous to enter.

And then something turns.

You survive the shock, put on a dress, walk out into streets you can't pronounce.

Phad thai at a ramshackle shop beside a 7-Eleven: soft noodles, firm sprouts, the tang of fresh lemon, and a coconut on the side you have to close your eyes to drink.

There's no other way to do it. Eyes shut, a little swoon, a tiny country with a population of one, and she's the one eating.

You go back the next day, and the day after. By the third the owner and his family know you, and they give you the table under the fan.

You put on your big ugly headphones and walk like no one's watching, because no one is. You smile at people, because some involuntary force keeps tugging the corner of your mouth up.

Somewhere in between disappearing and freedom, you meet the girls you don't get to be at home.

The one who makes conversation with waiters and gets hugged goodbye. The one with the resting bitch-face who somehow becomes the person her dorm-mate confesses his whole life to at 1am.

The one who climbs a hill twice because there's time for the sunset, sees a sketchy cave, and goes in.

Can you bring them home? Can the girl who walked into the cave survive a Monday standup?

She does, like a hidden tattoo. Nobody in the room needs to know it's there.

But when the standup drags on, I touch the place where it is, and I know I made it.