It's hard to underestimate how much I have been changed by leaving my country of birth (the US) and traveling/living elsewhere.

I married my polyglot Malaysian college girlfriend, after having grown up with almost zero time on foreign soil, and a diet that was laughably non-diverse. We then spent our money and any vacation time (plus some unpaid leave) on travel to Malaysia of course, India, Australia, and Europe from the Isle of Skye to Istanbul.

We left the US for good in 2006 and have mostly lived in France; now we have kids and travel less, but we've gone to the writers festival in Ubud, Bali (see article), and took our first daughter as a baby to Sri Lanka for another one; recently we took both girls (1.5 and almost 5 years old, respectively) to Rwanda for a few weeks, traveling with friends who had been living there.

One of these days I want to write some of my own essays about things I've noticed; how I've changed... But for the moment here are a few thoughts.

I certainly do feel like an outsider, now, everywhere. This past summer we took a trip to the US, after 3 years away. It was all familiar, but the minor annoyances I remembered were now grating -- like TVs everywhere, including in the airports, taxis, and many restaurants. On a previous visit (before kids) I came alone, working on a contract and staying in a hotel in Western NY state -- and I got a haircut at 8pm on a Sunday night, in a mall. The woman cutting my hair asked which was better, the US or France, assuming the answer would be the US, of course. I didn't/don't have a simple answer, but I did point out to her that she was working, cutting hair, at 8pm on a Sunday night. I don't know about Paris, but where I live, no one's job makes them cut hair during dinner time (let alone later), nor at any time on a Sunday, or Monday, for that matter.

But about feeling like an outsider... It's worth mentioning that I'm a tall white well-educated man. I'm often treated with respect even when I've done absolutely nothing to earn it; I win most stereotype lotteries, even the "who should I mug" one, because I'm athletic-looking enough (plus not flashy enough) that it doesn't look worth it. It's been eye-opening sometimes, traveling with my wife, who's ethnic Indian, or groups of friends who aren't white. No, this woman opening my backpack is not a pickpocket; she's my wife (Spain). Or no, this woman playing with my children is not the nanny; she's my wife (white lady in Malaysia). Oh, you don't even rent this property to non-family members, until you do when I appear? In this case our friends actually waved me to the front to correct the "confusion" (Malaysia, British woman). Oh, this shirt cannot be returned by my wife, but when I come in it's okay?

In Bali I felt far more comfortable on the street -- not so different from many parts of Malaysia, which has gradually become far less alien to me -- than in the heavily-guarded resorts full of rich Western tourists. The festival provided lodging for us, and thus we stayed in a resort that looked something like the starship enterprise hovering over a valley on massive concrete pillars; our room had its own private swimming pool, and there were (Indonesian) staff everywhere, ready at a moment's notice to usher you into a golf cart and convey you to your destination. The gates into the property were guarded with multiple uniformed men with what looked to me like military-grade weaponry. I remember a 30-something American man lying by one of the central pools, not bothering to hide the erection under his shorts while idly talking about ad campaigns to his blonde wife/gf. It was incredibly uncomfortable; I'd never been more conscious of what colonialism has morphed into than I was there. We walked and got sweaty, rather than ask to be driven, and just tried to be kind to everyone we met working there.

"Paradise" is very obviously defined when someone decides to build one. In Ubud, we saw a few -- some private residences, some resorts for tourists; it generally involves a small number of wealthy white people commanding a humble army of "natives", who tend their gardens, procure and prepare their exotic (but not too exotic!) food, sanitize their water, build and maintain their impractical dwellings, and still more natives to wear uniforms and carry guns to guard them from the not-so-nice natives. And most importantly know their place, and melt instantly into the woodwork when not needed. It's profoundly creepy in small doses, but I'm bleakly sure that one could be inured to it.

Part of the outsider feeling is that when you take the time to adapt yourself to living in a different environment -- even just a switch from rural to city in your own country -- you gain context that some people around you don't have. Undergoing a serious disease has the same effect. The farther you go, the more likely it is that you're building a block of experience that you won't share with the people you talk with. Sometimes that's useful; do enough things that scare you, and you'll find fewer things scary in life. But even when it's not useful, it's just there. You sense the difference when you're talking to people; if you have a major part of your self that's alien to your conversation partner, you can either pretend it's not there (and feel a bit like a fake), or try to play tour guide, but either way you're cutting away the basic closeness of shared experiences.