Day 242: Playground Asia

After work tonight Michael drove out to Ilsan to have dinner with Addie, Katie, and I. The four of us went and had a truly delicious dinner at Aroi Aroi - the local Thai restaurant. God, the food there is amazing! After dinner we headed back to The Village for our attempt at 'Goonies Night'. As mentioned earlier in a recent blog entry, I've never seen the movie 'The Goonies'. (much to the shock, horror, and despair of my friends.) We decided to rectify this dire situation by renting the movie and bringing me up to speed (a la late 1980's!)

Unfortunately our local video store didn't have that movie, or several others that we wanted to rent. Instead we watched 'Zoolander' which is another movie that I had never seen until then. And it was hilarious! I haven't laughed that hard in a while - what a great, silly movie! :-)

After the movie Michael and Addie stayed behind to help me decorate my apartment with the cool stuff I bought in Insadong. I have no artistic eye for interior design whatsoever, and in fact am rather helpless in that matter. Luckily Michael's pretty good at that kind of stuff, as is Addie. We arranged all my cool Korean paper into these funky placements on the wall that look really cool. And wow what a difference it made! They've added so much colour to my overly beige apartment, I love it!

On the weekend I had also bought a massive map of Asia that we put up on the wall next to my bed. We then sat on the bed for like an hour just looking at all the different countries and islands and exotic destinations and roads and paths to travel (both well-worn and off-the-beaten) and endless unpronounceable places to explore. It was dreamy and imaginative and inspiring and fun.

Our Boracay Christmas plans may be in jeopardy because of inconvenient flight schedules, so we launched into ideas and possibilities for Plan B. None of us want to stay in cold snowy Korea for Christmas holidays, and all five of us who are going on the trip agree that we wanna go somewhere warm and tropical and beachy. So the three of us sat around pointing out different places that we could go to. Ko Phi Phi in Thailand. Bali in Indonesia. Penang in Malaysia. The Maldives off the coast of India. Islands with names unknown in Vietnam. All available at our request and merest desire.

I've spent many an hour in my life just pouring over maps fantasizing about all the places that I'd love to travel to, and here I was doing it again. But this time it was completely different. For the first time in my life I have the means and ability to *actually* go to these places! While checking out that map of Asia, all we had to do was close our eyes, spin around a few times, and put our fingers on the map if we really wanted to. We can go anywhere. It's all available, it's all within our reach. Asia has become our playground, and we have complete freedom to travel to the destinations of our wildest dreams. All we have to do is choose where we want to go. What an amazing relevation! And what a dream come true for me.