I Left You Back in Asia

Amid the global pandemic, I found myself in Amsterdam sitting cross-legged on my living room floor with an assortment of different-sized plastic lids and containers sprawled around me. With the pride and excitement of a cat bringing home a dead bird to its owner, I was presenting my girlfriend Sara with a newly purchased set of Tupperware. Sara, being the sweet and patient soul she is, nodded back at me as one does to a rambling crazy person at a bus stop as I demonstrated the snapping action of the lids and how they could be stacked one on top of the other like leftover-holding Legos.

My arousal over Tupperware signaled a level of domestication that even I found surprising. I had spent the early years of my adult life avoiding traditional adulthood the way you avoid someone at a party who's known for recruiting friends to join their latest pyramid scheme. Back in 2014, I had sat in the crowd of my college graduation amongst the sea of caps and gowns, nibbling at my nails, terrified by the prospect of walking across the graduation stage only to be instantly enveloped by all the distinctly unfun aspects of traditional adulthood. I could see it all so clearly: the Dean would greet me on the other side of the graduation stage, shake my hand, and then hand me a goodie-bag of adulthood mundanity: my diploma, a marriage certificate, a mortgage, a dog leash, and the birth certificates for two children. I'd then be condemned to the life of a suburban Sysaphis: locked in a minivan, I'd caravan a gaggle of children, wife and dog between strip malls, Panera Bread, and soccer practices for the rest of eternity.

I cannot stress how much this life did not appeal to me.

None of this, of course, happened. I walked across the stage and, like many recent graduates, was tasked with figuring out what the hell to do with my life.

Thankfully, faint ideas about who I hoped to become as an adult had been brewing somewhere inside me long before graduation. In my high school and college years, I had become infatuated with the international exploits and adventures of the likes of Conrad, Orwell, Hemmingway, Bryson, and Bourdain. Their stories had instilled a craving in me for the romance, for better or worse, of the solo traveler. Reading in bed as a teenager, my book illuminated by a single lamp hanging above my head, I placed myself as the main character in their stories, imagining life exploring some land far from the suburbs of Portland, Oregon, living with unwavering independence, unshackled from traditional responsibilities, marinating in the thrill of not knowing what the next day, weeks, or months would bring, thriving off the uncertainty that others would find crippling, and imagining my friends back home whispering to each other in their cubicles did you hear what Jason’s doing? He’s living in freaking Timbuktu! How crazy is that?

Anthony Bourdain, of course, is and was the Michael Jordan of my generation's solo-travelers, globetrotters, and expatriates. Every expat—whether they spend their days in a suit and tie working from a high-rise in London or traveling Thailand with a single pair of Harem Pants and an ounce of weed in their pocket—has taken inspiration from Bourdain’s books, television shows, and overall persona and thinks of themselves, in one way or another, as cut from a similar cloth as the great Bourdain himself.

This is all for a good reason: Bourdain is and was our 21st century Hemmingway. He traveled the way we all wish we traveled (and the way we tell our friends back home we travel even if in actuality we don’t). He set the gold standard for what it meant to travel with a purpose and care and thought. He romanticized adventure and storytelling and discovery just as much as he did (perhaps unintentionally) heroin, weed-smoking, alcoholism, depression, and the inability to ever be satisfied. His faded tattoos, slicked-back hair, smoldering cigarette, and weary eyes were the symbols of a life truly lived. And all of us who live our lives abroad, to one degree or another and for better or worse, chase a life that, at the end, will result in the same romantic weariness we saw in Bourdain's eyes that only comes from the weight of having a million stories to tell. 

I say all of this because of what Bourdain meant for my own life: while not a role model per se, he certainly served as inspiration and provided a younger me evidence that the non-traditional life I craved was worth chasing. At some of the most pivotal crossroads during my own journey to get abroad (and stay there) I have turned to the adage W.W.B.D (What Would Bourdain Do) as my compass for taking the most interesting path in life available to me. More than once, my Bourdain compass has pointed me in the direction of experiences I had long imagined for myself but never seriously considered would come to fruition.

At no time was this more true than when making my initial leap abroad. With a post-graduation summer gig coming to an end and unemployment on the horizon, I stumbled upon a job offer that would take me to Asia. WWBD? It seemed obvious to me. So at 23-years old, I left my girlfriend, family, and friends, and packed my bag. Six months after graduating from university, I landed in the place I would call home for the better part of five years: Vietnam.

I had, somehow, managed to pull my dream life out from between my ass cheeks.

***

Bourdain always spoke of Hanoi as one of his favorite cities in the world. Back in Portland, I had watched him on TV cruise the chaotic streets on a motorbike while waxing poetically about the food, culture, and people, with the exotic sites of the massive Southeast Asian city, reflected in his aviator shades. Now, not many months later, I had the surreal experience of following directly in his footsteps, waking up every day to the endless honking of those same streets luring me towards my own episode of Parts Unknown.

For five years, I did my best Bourdain impression: zooming around Hanoi on a 90cc Honda moped; eating morning Phở Bò made by someone’s grandma on a dusty street corner; wandering local markets; day drinking on Hoy Tay Lake; partying with a group of Vietnamese gangsters; taking a motorcycle along the Chinese border; learning how to navigate cultural and language barriers that come with international romances.

When it wasn’t the primary focus, Bourdain never let the darker side of solo travel get too far out of frame. As I found out for myself, this was for good reason. In my daydreams abroad, my brain had failed to incorporate the long, lonely troughs that lay between the intermittent peaks of embarking on a new life in an exotic locale. I found out the hard way that there is no sense of isolation quite like looking out over a city of 7 million strangers with whom you share no common language or culture. For too many nights to count I found myself lying in bed, still sweating from chasing a cockroach through my kitchen, scrolling through social media, and seeing images of my friends' back home celebrating the milestones of normal adult life: smashing cake into their brides face at their wedding, scratching the ears of an adopted puppy, or standing in front of their newly purchased home. As for myself? You could find me spending Christmas' pulled up at a bar, New Year on my couch in sweatpants, and my birthday in empty noodle shops, the only foreigner parked in the corner with my face hovering over a bowl of bun cha and sipping a luke-warm beer poured over ice.

With each passing year, the gulf between my life and the ones my friends were living increased. The awkward pauses of every check-in phone call or delays between text exchanges served to illustrate just how few shared experiences there were left to squeeze from our relationships. As our contact became more intermittent, and as I watched them from afar collect their Badges of Traditional Adulthood, I couldn't help but at times lay back on the couch and, with the sounds of someone’s chickens clucking outside my window on the street below, ask the universe for an answer to the deepest existential question a 20-something can muster: what the hell was I doing with my life?

Before this all sounds too melodramatic, I can say, I took a dark joy in embodying the lonely, brooding, adventurer in a foreign land. Even without the tattoos (I don't like needles), or the cigarette (they give me a headache), or the heroin (again, needles), I could be sure of one thing: I was living the Bourdainesque life that I had long dreamed of living. I took great solace in the fact that I had stumbled haphazardly onto identity and life path for myself and, like a starving artist, I was suffering (if only existentially) to maintain it. It may have been lonely at times, but this is who I was: a solo traveler, never tied down, living on the other side of the globe, always ready to say yes to the next new experience, and promising myself all along the way that I would do anything it took to keep the adventure alive.

While I didn’t want the adventure to end, and as much as I loved Vietnam, I had no intention of staying forever, wary of becoming the stereotypical older expat and the less-than-pleasant associations that come with it.  Luckily, an opportunity to continue my adventure in Europe found me: after five years in Vietnam, I received a job opportunity that would relocate me to Amsterdam at the start of 2020.

As always, I simply had to ask: WWBD? In response, my brain flooded itself with stereotypical wanderlust visions: I imagined myself hopping on the train each weekend to slip off to a new European capital, walking through cobblestone squares, smashing beer steins, sipping cappuccinos hungover from a night of European clubbing, and looking skyward after a bite into a delectable pastry.

Bourdain would head to Europe.

And so would I.

***

The pandemic hit six weeks or so into my arrival in Amsterdam, and for the first time in five years, my adventure came to a screeching halt.

For months, instead of living my version of a Bourdanesque life, I, along with the rest of the world, spent most of my time locked in my apartment. To satisfy my travel urges, I spent hour upon hour living vicariously through YouTube videos: I watched travel vlogs, music festivals from years past, and motorcycle adventure documentaries. They served at best like nicotine gum: momentary satiation, but ultimately, they just caused me to crave the real thing even more.

By September, with no end to the pandemic insight, I was over Amsterdam. With everything closed I was struggling to meet people, getting antsy, and wanted to be in a position to enjoy a fresh start when the world eventually reopened.

I got my wish: after only a year in Amsterdam, I accepted a new job opportunity set to start in February 2021 in Berlin, Germany.

Berlin!

From what I could gather, there were few other better places to get a proper European experience than Berlin. It was the brooding, druggy, do-whatever-you-want-besides-litter capital of Europe. And while I didn’t have plans of cross-dressing or sporting leather assless chaps for a night out on the town, Berlin had an authentic wildness that Amsterdam didn’t. Amsterdam was Disneyland. Berlin, as far as I could tell, was kayaking down Niagara Falls on Molly.

WWBD?

I accepted the offer without hesitation, leaving me four months to enjoy Amsterdam before hopping on a train to move to Berlin.

And this was all fine and dandy. Until I met Sara.

***

Love at first sight is depicted through a hundred cliches: locked eyes and a smile across a bar, the first spontaneous passionate kiss, the unmistakable flutter of butterflies in the stomach.

But anyone who has actually lived the experience knows, of course, it is nothing like the cliches would suggest. Instead, falling in love at first sight is more akin to going to your local swimming pool for a dip and finding yourself lining up against Michael Phelps in the 200-meter butterfly. The experience is all panic and existential crisis: what am I doing here? How is this happening? Am I the type of person who does this? Am I dreaming? Do I want this in my life? And, how cool is this, it’s Michael fucking Phelps! 

Though I wasn’t watching the time that closely, I realized around four minutes into my first date with Sara that I was sipping wine across from my own Michael Phelps. I won’t bore you with the details of how I "knew." Suffice to say: I did not have “falling in love” on my pre-departure-to-Berlin bingo card. And yet, there I was, face in hand, staring doe-eyed at Sara listening to her explain her work as a researcher through a light-Dutch accent. I was a puddle of mush. Smitten. A total goner.

I didn't hide my commitment to Berlin from Sara, explaining to her on our second date that the ink had dried on an exciting job offer that I couldn’t pass up. In her typical too-good-to-be-true nature, she explained that she understood and she would do the same if the roles were reversed. Even with an expiration date looming on the horizon, we both agreed on wanting to enjoy each other’s company while we could before I moved to Berlin to resume my European adventure and Sara returned to her Dutch life, sans me.

But before we said goodbye, we had a global pandemic to enjoy together. We were lucky: while for some longer-term couples the pandemic presented challenges, we took the opportunity to enjoy three months together distraction-free. With the city closed, we lived more like newlyweds and could be found on most days either at her place or mine. We sipped coffee together in the mornings, went on adventures around the city, walked Amsterdam’s glorious weekend markets, watched movies and silly dating shows, made each other dinner, and generally entertained each other without too much effort.

The lockdown life that I found myself living with Sara was enough of a 180 from my life in Vietnam to give a person vertigo. I felt like a wild dog that had been plucked from running through the forest and placed on a dog bed in front of a cozy fire in someone's family room. And, to my surprise, I absolutely loved it. Sure, I didn't have the unlimited freedom offered by life in the forest, but I also didn't have to dig through dumpsters for my meals or risk getting stuck out in the cold without shelter. I had never in my adult life had such stability. I could have never imagined it possible to derive such satisfaction from a stable, domesticated, routine life.

As counterintuitive as it was, I also had never felt freer than when I was constrained to one city and one person. Without realizing it, I had been somewhat trapped by the anxiety of feeling that to live the life of Mr. Solo Adventurer Bachelor Guy, I always needed to be doing something, lest I be taking my freedom and independence for granted. But with the possibility of travel out of the question and dating apps far from my mind, I could sit on the couch with Sara, glasses of wine in our hands, completely content and released from the pressure of feeling I should be out there.

As they tend to, our relationship’s expiration date did eventually arrive. The pandemic gave Sara and me the impetus for jumping directly into the deep end of the romance pool and we enjoyed it immensely. What we hadn’t prepared ourselves for was how hard it would be to get back out. Both of us admitted to having fallen deeper in love and into a more serious relationship than either of us had expected. Just as we were hitting our stride as a couple, we found ourselves standing on the platform at Amsterdam’s Grand Central Station, holding each other and saying goodbye for the last time before I boarded my train to Berlin.

***

All of us expats have a secret. In the best light, we appear to the friends and family we leave behind as brave thrill-seekers ushered on by some insatiable desire to chase adventure and novelty, our brains rewarding us with a cascade of dopamine each time we throw open our bedroom blinds to be greeted with the sight of a new city skyline.

What no expat admits is that we all—like Bourdain—are also driven by fear and insecurity. The insecurity that staying in one place too long will allow people to get to know us beyond a casual clink of the glass; fear we aren't talented enough to excel back at home in our careers; fear that without being physically located in an interesting place we’ll be left with nothing interesting about us at all; fear that without the excuse of living abroad, we won’t have any way to explain why we have no wife, no husband, no car, or no house of our own.

So, ultimately, WWBD?

Eventually, end his own life.

Maybe it is callous of me, but I’m one to roll my eyes a bit at those who get teary-eyed over celebrity deaths. But when the CNN alert came across my phone that Bourdain had been found dead in his Paris hotel room, I couldn’t help but feel deeply saddened. Hell, I shed more than a few tears. I was never silly enough to see Bourdain as a role model, but he certainly served as inspiration for my own life and evidence that travel and life abroad were worth pursuing.

You don’t have to be a licensed psychologist to see that Anthony Bourdain was looking for something. Maybe it was something to fill the hole heroin had left. Maybe he just couldn’t kick the shadow of depression. Whatever it was, we do know he had the means to explore every city and country in the world to find it and he conducted his search in style. Yet, he was unable—despite searching hundreds of cities and thousands of local markets, side streets, bars, and hotel rooms—to find the answer he needed to make life worth living.

And so, years after his death, I sat on a train headed to Berlin and began to consider for myself: if I was, in my own way, earnestly following Bourdain's path, what might I be trying to find? And after six years abroad, did I still think it was somewhere out there to be found?

***

I arrived in Berlin missing Sara, but, I have to admit, I figured that, similar to past relationships, being in a new city would serve as enough of a distraction to allow me to move on and recast our relationship as only an important memory.

After surviving a few months more in lockdown alone, Berlin and the rest of Europe began to open up. Inspired by months of watching travel vlogs, I did my best to explore a recently reopened Berlin: I visited museums, tried new bars, and walked weekend markets. I even went on a few dates. But something was different this time: the new setting and the opportunities to explore weren’t giving me the same kick they used to. Standing amongst the sights of a new city used to give the unmistakable flutter of butterflies in my stomach. Standing in a central square of Berlin's Mitte neighborhood, I felt nothing.

Thinking a bit of travel might help me get my solo-explorer mojo back, I took a trip to Madrid. Spain is a favorite of mine, and I booked a week, expecting the romance of Madrid, along with endless tapas and sangria, to help me get over my funk.

Again, no dice. After a day of walking around, I felt the same, empty, semi-depression I had felt when exploring Berlin. Back in my Airbnb, I laid sprawled on my couch. The beautiful architecture, amazing food, and gorgeous people of Madrid were right outside my door and I couldn’t get excited about any of it. This only fueled my frustration and depression. I was, I concluded, being a dick. I had a great life, I was traveling in a beautiful city, and I was disgusted with myself for being such a melodramatic asshole who seemed to be taking everything I had waited a year to experience for granted. But I also couldn’t avoid the obvious: something just didn't feel the same. I couldn’t muster the enjoyment of the solo adventure the way I once had.

It felt pathetic and lame and sad and I resisted admitting to myself, but I knew what I wanted.

I wanted Sara.

So I grabbed my phone and made a call.

***

Sara and I spoke for three hours that night. We talked about everything: work, travel plans, but mostly, we spoke about ourselves.

The more we talked, the more our situation crystallized: six months after saying goodbye, we both felt no closer to moving on from each other. We also confessed that, ultimately, we both wanted to end up together. But, in the short term, we saw no path to being together. As hard as my leaving had been on her, Sara was enjoying the opportunity to be on her own, to live how she wanted, free to follow any whim or professional opportunity that might come her way.  No one could understand this desire better than I could: I had spent my 20s living across the globe, taking any opportunity or interesting path I stumbled across, and I had no desire to rob her of that experience for my own selfish desire to be with her.

Ultimately, we agreed to stay in touch as we had been, but that for the time being, we agreed Sara deserved to enjoy her mid-20s free from the considerations of a serious relationship. The best we could do was agree to hope that a time would come when we could prioritize our relationship over our careers and independence.

And we left it at that.

***

In my years living in Asia, I correlated life satisfaction with the amount of freedom I exercised: the freedom to move to new cities; the freedom to pursue any and all career opportunities; the freedom to pursue romance; the freedom from traditional obligations and responsibilities. I prided myself on my independence, my willingness to go out in the world on my own and find my own way, determined to satisfy a desire to prove to myself that I could make it on my own. As a result, I am the sole proprietor of a thousand memories and stories from the last seven years and, like the men whose stories inspired my own adventure, I lay claim to a journey that took me literally around the globe. For that, I'm incredibly grateful.

But the sheen on the solo-adventurer self-identity has started to fade. And now, faced with turning 30 in a few months, I’m challenged with explaining to myself why I would want to return to Sara and in doing so walk away from an identity I took such great pride in cultivating.

The best explanation I can offer myself is that I don't really know and that not knowing is okay. Life is mostly a game of best guesses, estimations, approximations, hoping for the best, and then making up a story to justify the outcome later. So why my change of heart in chasing the solo-adventurer life forever?  My guess is that I feel that the temporary satisfaction that came from indulging in freedom for freedom's sake succame, like most things do, to the law of diminishing returns. Like a teenager eating ice cream for every meal when their parents are out of town, I realized—only after almost throwing up—that freedom is best experienced in a way that is measured and purposeful. In my early 20s, the gratification I got from living out my Bourdainesque journey outweighed the downsides that came with it: the loneliness, the feelings of selfishness, and the existential crisis that comes with the sense that you are going both everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. But eventually, once I proved to myself I could build a life anywhere on my own and that I could live, I'd needed, largely independent of anyone else, I couldn't suppress a growing need for some greater reason to continue doing so. And to continue doing for the sake of doing —as I have in the last year—resulted in rendering potentially meaningful experiences meaningless.

I'm not so naive to think that a serious relationship is a panacea for all of life's less than desirable feelings and experiences. That's the type of pressure that dooms a relationship before it even begins. No one person should be put in the position of being the answer to everything for someone else. But the butterflies in my stomach flutter again at the thought of building a life with Sara the way they used to when I stepped off the train alone in a foreign city. I can’t help but think that must mean something.

Since our conversation in Madrid, Sara and I continued talking, finally deciding to resume our relationship, for a myriad of logistical reasons, in December of 2021. I, of course, have no way of knowing for sure how our relationship will go. I am, as we all are, stuck with guessing that the time has come to challenge myself by stepping into this new world with Sara and face the challenges that come with living in one place and building a life with someone you love.

And tackling the ultimate challenge of keeping track of all our sets of Tupperware, together.

Contributor

Jason Carroway is an American expat living in Berlin, Germany. His other work can be found published at Across the Margin, From Whispers to Roars, High Shelf Press, and Wanderlust Travel Journal.