How much pack to prepare?

Here I am. I am a day from travelling, and I wonder whether I should bring my laptop, or something else, abroad.

I might even purchase one tomorrow, frankly.

I also am still deciding whether to take a backpack or a bag. I am thinking, for some reason, a backpack...

Travelling as a teacher

I am due to travel in two days. I am ready for it.

I remember the familiar fear of travelling in China; the fear of the unknown, and more. However, I have a reasonable hotel for the first few days. That is important. Much of the research I have done into travelling and the backpacker lifestyle talks of how tiring a shared room really is.

Part of the purpose of this blog is to provide something of a guide to those who might want to seek something in the way that I do.

To that end, I desire to travel, yet to keep teaching somewhat.

Talking to colleagues today, in loose terms, I heard of the gratuities that they expect to earn. That means something.

I also know that my vocation challenges those who teach with weary cynicism. Yet to show the best side of me is not a terrible challenge - it is a responsive way of being. It is a choice; not a repression of desires. I determine the best side of me.

And so, what do I need to travel on this trip? I am going for 12-13 days

Passport
Bank cards (Middle Eastern and UK) - I need to tell my bank
Wallet
Sim Card (with temporary roaming?)
Travel Insurance
Workplace Medical Insurance

Clothes
T-shirts x
Trousers x3
Shirts x
Underwear and Socks x10 :-D
Shoes (flip flops; walking boots; shoes)

Toiletries
Toothpaste + Toothbrush
Shaving equipment
Meds

Electronics
Kindle
Lenovo Tablet...
Headphones (bluetooth? wired?) I am worried about them being stolen - wired earphones...
Rubbish Lenovo tablet or Surface Pro... I think that the Surface Pro will allow me to work. However, there are issues taking it. It is worth a huge amount. However, it is light.

I want to read this holiday. I want to experience my mind again.

I am currently looking at my low-fi Lenovo notebook: hopefully I can make it work well enough to install office et al.

I want to be inside Vietnam, and reading. We will see... The balance between travel by foot, and checking out things via Trip Advisor, will be interesting.

A lifestyle for fourteen days

At this moment I am sat in a cluttered apartment; the items placed around me flow in still longing of the unusual mix of love and compulsion, of both marking and consuming, sat in both dry and stick surfaces on the table around this huge screen and stark lamp.

I am ready to walk soon.

The day ahead stretches on with almost thirty tasks on my to-do list. That is a rhythm that has been familiar for a time.

The Christian Anglo-European mindset that determines my language, as well as the past that I have experience so profoundly, sees the idea that I should suffer some pain of work and responsibility in this life for the benefit of something more later still besets me.

Yet the besetting of my spirit is still ideal.

I live in a place now that is naked of its treating of me as a means to an end. And why not? It is a place that rewards me well financially. It is not overtly mean. Compared to my experience in the North of England, it is easy.

Let me say this: I had no assets and an overdraft in my mid-20s. I had no connections and only my mind, and my reading and writing. I had some culture. And now? Four years into travelling abroad I have cleared my student loan debts (the product of a thoughtless following of expectation to which I still somewhat subscribe...), have a small car I have almost paid off, and enjoy tens of thousands of pounds of savings. From where I have come from, that is a life-changing sum of money.

Moreover, the money I expect to receive when I leave this school in the form of a gratuity, and the wages for time not worked afterwards (the holidays and more!) to be tens of thousands as well, and tax-free.

This sum of money is life-changing, especially if I seek to live cheaply for a while.

One thing that I come to realise about my spirit is that I am eternally restless. I chose to not just be. The modifer there is effectively the very - 'just'. Is that my spirit, or is that how my mind connects with the brutal 'otherness' of the isolated Western world in which I find myself?

I have thought about how I connect with the world - of by its nature writing in this anonymous blog of how I do not enjoy a fulfilling outlet for expression and connection at this time.

There are real considerations to be made about how I live, and by what I bring to this world. But, in the meantime is this: I have earned this holiday. When I first moved abroad, I found myself in a relationship very quickly. my holidays were determined for years afterwards. My last holiday in Canada was fruitful for my spirit. I also chose another one in which I experienced, as well in Xmas in which I enjoyed too. I then saw my mother in February here. And now? Vietnam.

It is monstrous how my mind reduces itself to a confining falsehood. I want to just be. To become a conduit, a conscious accepter of how this body and brain are being.

Seeking Again

Ten days after last writing I have felt, for some time, an increasing sense of my own worth.

Despite the obvious angst and uncertainties, I have always retained a sense of earnest dignity. My lack of social connection and power has meant that I have learnt to restrain the expression of this with some of those around me. Growing up in a poor Midland town, I realised that there was a kind of social power in the crass vitality of the conversation of some. In my school, such groups were ubiquitous. I found myself with the choice of spending my time with them, or walking.

I chose walking.

That is a choice I will be able to make again.

There is one kind of English teacher I know about: the teacher of the soul and spirit. Every student needs some kind of guidance. The ideal teacher is open about their values, and avoids bias. The functional English teacher is simply not one I recognise: they are no teacher for me. They are a teacher by their given profession on tax returns; they are teacher by fitting into bureaucratic systems; and they are a teacher by perhaps a reluctant self-definition. Yet they are not a teacher I recognise.

The English teacher I recognise is a Byronesque figure. They live the literature they write and read, and they decide each year whether they will still teach.

Sitting here in a worn Ikea chair in my Ikea-branded apartment out in the desert makes me realise that my life could take different directions. I am weary, but not yet frayed.

Last night I sat with friends and realised the delightful conversation of wise minds. Old souls, edged with experience.

The searing reality of relentless mornings waking up to responsibility has not made me weak. It has not blasted my mind. Only made my hair a little grey, my muscles softer, and my eyes a little dim.

Yet they are still sharp. My breath still burns these lungs, and my feet need to walk.

I have loved, and loved much. My heart has calmed somewhat, and this self here has settled back into the seat of my ampitheatred heart to see what others may do.

My loneliness here is privileged. I have the money, time, health and mind to travel as once I desired. I will seek again.

A surprising dislocation

At this time I find myself sat with a smaller number of people than before. The lack of space to interact with other teachers is telling on my mind; there is nothing really innately wrong with these people - they are just a small group with a conversation that is about things immediately in front of them.

I found in another school that I was able to sit with a variety of staff: this was a delight. The dynamics of this played especially well. And now? I sit in small rooms, walking backwards and forwards in an air-conditioned corridor. That is something that affects the spirit.

There is something about this that is unduly small.

I stand outside and watch.

I still need to secure where I will stay...

Booked some time

I have booked some time in Vietnam; 12 days.

I booked with Emirates, and I am staying in a mid-range hotel at the price of 30 pounds a night.

I have the opportunities to pay much less (to pay that for the total). However, I am used to a standard of comfort that is far greater than what I done before.

I feel that I want to be a backpacker over the summer. But now is, I feel, not necessarily the time.

I am tired from the day. But satisfied, nevertheless.