I'm hoping the silence and secrets of the desert can help me sort things out. It's as good a place as any to end a journey, to find meaning to a year of wandering. I'm reminded of the poverty of the so-called 'developing' world and the dozens of languages we've heard. If nothing else, travel has taken me outside myself and into the wide world to experience other ways of living and thinking. We started in Singapore , in a society of ten distinct cultures and religions living together in the common pursuits of financial gain and the hope of a better life.
Enemies live side by side under the strict rule of an Asian government.
In a society that on the surface seemed so similar to my own, I was startled that people would be happy to forgo personal liberties for the sake of safety, order and civility. I learned the power of money to keep all that together. Coming up the Malay Peninsula , we rode a day-long train into the heart of Bangkok just as the Thai Bhat began its plunge, setting off the current global economic crisis. To be in a place on which world attention is focused made me realize the difference between reading about something in the paper and actually seeing the event with your own eyes. This in itself, I decided, is reason enough to travel.