Sticking Chicken

Sunday 7th February 2010, 6pm, Panda Tours Travel Agency - Chiang Mai

It's funny how when you talk to other people who've been travelling for a little while you find commonalities in new vocabulary terms that in any other context would require further explanation. There are a few select phrases out here which fellow backpackers instantly recognise, 'same same, but different', 'Koh Samui rash', 'best price for you', 'you want boom boom?', 'M150 shakes', and the one that has been relevant to my situation for the past few days, 'I've got stuck'.

You arrive at a new destination, make a list of all the things you hope to do there, figure that it will take you 3 days, you are already mindful of where you will be going next, and then, oh, would you look at that, it's 6 days later, I'm still here, and there's 4 things on the list I haven't done. How did this happen? I got stuck. So if I were to write the Oxford English Dictionary's Volume on Travelling, my definition of 'getting stuck' would go something like this:

The process by which a traveller becomes tired of the constant packing and unpacking of their backpack and on arriving in a new destination where they feel comfortable and relaxed, starts to behave as though they live permanently in this place and forgets that they have things to do and other places to go. Common symptoms and ways to identify one who has got stuck: spends more than a normal amount of time reading in cafes, local people know their name, has astounding knowledge of street names, tuk tuk drivers don't succeed in ripping them off, can recommend where in town serves best pancakes.

I've got stuck in Chiang Mai. I've always felt at home in cities, I guess this is an inevitable consequence of having grown up in and around London. People and traffic and noise and pavement smother me and envelop me in their activity, I become lost in the crowd and then walk with the crowd. I read a passage in a book recently which was describing the process of adding a new chicken to an established coop. If you place the chicken in the hen house during the day then the other birds will feel threatened and territorial, putting the new bird in danger. The solution is to slip the sleeping hen in to the roost at night, when they all wake up in the morning the other chickens presume the new bird has always been there, and the new recruit also has no memory of ever having been anywhere else. I feel like this is what has happened to me in Chiang Mai. As though I snuck in under the cover of darkness and come sunrise neither I nor anyone else realised that I haven't always been a member of the flock. Since my clandestine invasion I have been pecking and clucking and flapping away like the silly little chicken that I am, carried along with the easy motion of this city.

I've stepped in and put a stop to this behaviour though. I reminded myself; Grace, you are not actually a chicken, continuing to compare yourself to one is neither helpful nor conducive to the prospect of moving on, you're travelling, so travel. With the autonomous thought and proactive decisive powers that only the smartest of hens possess I have finally booked an overnight bus to Bangkok, which I shall be catching in half an hour. December was the acclimatisation period, steady, measured - just enough places and journeys for practice. January was a sprint, hectic, jam-packed, a time to get in to the swing of the travelling lifestyle. February I think is shaping up to be a month of easy meandering, a holiday within this holiday, few places, long stays, soaking up the last few weeks of this stage of the trip in the best spots for mindless chicken living.

There's no rush anymore, no urgency, no need to see and do everything, no fear of missing out. Why? Simple. I will be coming back. This is nowhere near the end for me and South East Asia, I have the rest of my life to explore it. I'm at peace here, at ease, pleased to be alive; I've found a coop where I woke up feeling at home, and I'm stuck.