Musings, in the Final Hours of My 49th Year on Earth
Me at the wheel of an old VW Beetle on Cozumel, after I paired up with another solo woman traveler too scared to rent a big-ass scooter to drive around the island. It was my 38th-birthday trip to Mexico.
I have just poured myself a glass of a truly mediocre but way overpriced white wine.
I'm gonna drink and write, from my balcony, until the mosquitoes run me back inside.
In a few hours, I shall turn 50.
A Bangkok friend has been teasing me relentlessly about it. He's got it wrong though. I'm actually good with it.
Yesterday after I ran-walked five miles, I took a photo of myself, sweating bullets. It's probably my favorite selfie I ever took. It is, however, NSFW, unless maybe you're WFH. But then, I don't want to lose any friends so I won't share it here.
I feel pretty amazing, from a fitness perspective, better than even 10 or 12 years ago.
But I'd be lying if I said I was totally jazzed about celebrating a “milestone” birthday under the current conditions in Thailand right now. That, I am absolutely gutted about.
We set Covid-19 records weekly -- sometimes twice weekly -- for deaths and new infections. And we all know the numbers are likely three or four times higher than the official counting in a country with around the same population as the United Kingdom.
While no one would say Thailand has devolved into chaos -- it certainly hasn't -- no one in her right mind would say it's a good situation or express much optimism about the coming weeks or months.
So while I feel badass for a member of AARP, the last week has been an emotional roller coaster as we've backslid into a lockdown -- though the government says it's not -- and the question of when I will leave the kingdom gets harder and harder to dodge.
Since I woke up this morning, I have cried five separate times (and counting!), including: 1) when I was laughing about something then suddenly violently crying; 2) when I was weeping openly next to the DHL counter after the girl told me she had to repack the camera lenses I was sending back to the states; 3) when I tearing up at the Central World Apple Store -- I'd bought an Apple Watch -- when the upstairs staff sang me "Happy Birthday".
These last 18 months in Asia have been surreal. Like, whose life is this??? And the last nine months have been bananas and thrilling and unbelievable — and a bunch of other adjectives — and, I imagine, not to be matched for a long, long, long time.
To contemplate it all ending? As the Thais will say: "Cannot".
So yeah, as I sit on my balcony in Bangkok -- it's still weird to say that -- I will admit that some bits are definitely not how I would have planned the run-up to my 50th birthday BUT this entire experience has truly been SOMETHING.
(You can read all the details in my yet-to-be-written memoir "Bangkok's Gonna Bangkok: The (Mostly) True Story of an Accidental Expat". Just kidding… I think.)