Richard's Travels

I have decided that it time to try to revive my moribund blog. I’m not sure why I fell off using it after China. I think perhaps that it was partly a sense of defeat – one of the ways I rationalized leaving China was that I was going to suck it up and get a job in the Middle East, save loads of money get the hell of out ESL teaching. In the end, however, I didn’t do any of those things but took a job teaching English at the British Council in Penang, Malaysia. It was a safe and easy choice. The British Council is a good school and Penang is a quiet, easy-to-live-in, English-speaking, foreigner friendly-small town. I quickly settled into a comfy routine here but never felt the same sense of adventure or wonder that I did in Vietnam or in China. I’m not quite sure why this is; I’m not sure if Penang is just objectively easier to deal with and less exciting, or if it because I’m just getting older and the adventure of living abroad begins to wane eventually. When all is said and done, I was young and green when I went to Vietnam and living there was incredibly intense and profoundly formative. And as for China, well, it’s a country that’s awe-inspiring on a daily basis…and I was in love.

So Penang has felt pedestrian in comparison, as well as being a personal cop-out and retreat on my part. However, two years after leaving China I really need to stop seeing it in those terms, and catching up on this blog is a way of moving on for me. After all, it’s not as if Malaysia isn’t a very interesting country, and I’ve done a fair bit of other travel too. As always the blog hopefully can be an update for any friends of mine who still read it, as well as a way for me to record some of my experiences and memories for my own sake.