Is this real life?

The Tour d'Afrique (12 years later) + Vietnam + life as a writer

Whenever mid-January rolls around, I can’t help but transport myself back to January 2012 in Egypt, where I was at the starting line of the Tour d’Afrique. It feels like a lifetime ago, and yet, because we’ve now been living in Asia (first Japan, then Thailand, now Vietnam) for over 4 months, the experience feels more alive in me than it did the last few years. 

Each year that passes, different memories and lessons stand out to me. This year, two themes have been especially present for me:

1. Border days: 

I love crossing borders. We are crossing them at a much lower frequency than I was on the TDA (3 border days here vs 10 there, in the same amount of time + by air here vs by land there), but each time I am in awe at just how much proximate countries can differ culturally. 

On one side of the border, shopkeepers smile and wave from a distance (Thailand), on the other, they pull you by the arm inside their store (Vietnam). One side’s desserts are better than I could have imagined (Thailand), the other’s gross me out (sorry Vietnam!). 

Of course every country has its sub- and distinct regional cultures, but I find nothing is as stark as the day you cross the border. One thing that came as a real surprise to me in Vietnam was the quality of the education system. Apparently, Vietnam is a top performer globally!

“The latest data from the World Bank show that, on aggregate learning scores, Vietnamese students outperform not only their counterparts in Malaysia and Thailand but also those in Britain and Canada, countries more than six times richer.”

I had no idea.

All credit goes to teachers, a system that invests in them, and a culture that respects them. But let me tell you, I feel it in my son’s school. I’ve been in hundreds (thousands?) of schools (including plentyyyyy of pricey private schools), so I think I’m pretty good at quickly picking up the vibe in a building, and only a small handful in North America have come close to the energy I feel in the one we’re sending our son to here. It’s just so jolly, so engaged, so palpably proud. 

One more comment, on food: Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam all have amazing cuisines, even for us vegetarians. That being said, by far the best meals I continue to have are cooked at home*. We spend our first few days in a new place going to a ton of “best of” restaurants, where Uri picks up ideas and inspiration, and then he works his magic and puts them all to shame. It’s unreal. Watch out if this guy ever decides to open a food truck. 

*he doesn’t like when I brag about his cooking, but this is also how I test if he’s reading my newsletter (he never is, so I think in turn I can say whatever I want!!)

2. Real life: 

There were two camps of cyclists on the Tour d’Afrique: those who vocally dreaded the return to “real life,” and those who retorted “THIS IS REAL LIFE!!” 

I feel like I’m in both camps. 

Like: playing with my 19-month old son every night before bed, I feel like I’m in an opium den, inhaling the ecstasy of the present moment. I simultaneously feel like it’s everything and I’ll never have enough of it. It is fucking divine. It’s as real as life gets. If I could bottle up that feeling and sell it, I’d be richer than all the drug cartels combined. 

And yet, I know this particular stage won’t last forever. Real life will look less like him running gleefully between my arms and Uri’s (our favourite bedtime game: big hugs/my turn), and more like battles with him as we try to delay him moving his life online for as long as parentally possible.

Like: life as a writer getting lost in my thoughts. It takes a long time to get really lost in a place you think you know quite well, whether that’s your brain or your hometown. 

Just think of how far you’d have to venture outside your front door, without your smart phone, before you truly get lost. That’s where I am in my brain these days. Out past where public transit takes you, past gas stations and cell phone towers. I’m beyond where anything Trump says can reach me (must be nice, right?!). 

There’s a whole, fascinating, endless universe in there (in all of us!). I have to believe it’s real, even though I feel like I’m kinda floating above (or below? It’s not a feeling of being better or worse, just a sense of being removed) the rest of the world. 

I’m not convinced I know how to socialize anymore. The four calls I’ve had with friends in the last four months (Hi Dany, Ope, Jenny, and Beth!!) have all felt very surreal, like putting on skates for the first time and stepping onto thin ice above a rushing river.

But at some point, I know I’ll be going back to my “real life.” I do want to be social again, and will even (begrudgingly) have to earn money again. I don’t want to be drifting away from the real lives that everyone else is living forever. 

While I’m here, a few other thoughts on the life of a writer:

• I’m a big believer in doing something that I want to gain a greater appreciation for. Unless you have tried starting a business, or making a movie, or playing hockey, I promise you, you have no idea how hard it is to actually do it well. It turns out writing a book that actually is coherent, saying what you want it to say, and at least somewhat interesting, is hard. Like, HARD hard. But also, at least for me, it’s the good kind of hard. 

• It’s true that if you stop sending emails (and texts) you will stop receiving them. 

• The slower I go, the better my writing gets. Which makes it all the more strange to be living this slow life when ChatGPT could write a book for me in a day. To each their own, but personally, I’d rather the experience of getting lost in someone else’s real brain (whether watching a film or going to an art gallery) for a few hours in this limited real life that I have