Making Friends, Making Memories

One of the nice things about meeting people while traveling is that chance encounters don’t have to last very long to have the potential for long-lasting friendships. A number of people that I consider friends now have started as chance meetings on the road. Lisa is just the latest example; Sian is a friend that I met while hiking in China, later hung out with in Hong Kong, and then met up with again in Wales; I met William on a 30 hour train ride from Ulaan Baatar to Beijing, and later stayed with him in Tokyo; then there is Ben, perhaps my oldest travel friend, who I met on a train from Hong Kong to Hangzhou when our respective cabin mates (two sets of grandparently couples) decided we young 20 year olds would be better off traveling together. Since that chance encounter a decade ago, we have managed to stay in touch and have seen each other in Hong Kong, Beijing, Cambridge, and Berlin.

It doesn’t take much to start a conversation either, and on the road, it doesn’t take long to find something meaningful to talk about, that goes beyond all of that standard, typical on the road chatter: where are you from? where have you been? where are you going? what’s your favorite place (which I now find to be one of the most annoying and inane questions after years of being asked it) how long have you been traveling for? (I have learned never to act like I’ve been traveling for a long time – there is invariably someone in the room who has been on the road for 18 months which makes my 3 months seem downright measly.) No, it often just takes one remark, one reaction, one expression to find common ground and a meaningful reason for actually adding someone to your Facebook, or better yet, to get an email address.

For instance, in Coffee Bay, we stayed at the Coffee Shack, a well-known backpackers lodge right on the beach that is filled with young backpackers and a bar that rocks until the wee hours of the morning. This is where we met Dan and Monica, a couple who was going in the opposite direction from us, towards Durban. Young and I were hiding out with our welcome drinks in our car, away from the music and the commotion inside the bar, when Monica walked by and made a small comment about us drinking in the dark. I replied that we were just trying to get away from all the noise, and that’s when the connection was struck. We began talking about the difficulties of being older, quiet and peace-loving backpackers on a road filled with younger travelers intent on partying their way through a country and bonded over our mutual aversion to loud music.

Later, when Dan joined us, we started sharing horror stories about lost sleep and embarrassing moments. I shared my story from Rome, where I stayed in another youth-focused hostel where the manager made it a point to ensure that his guests got as wasted as they wanted to and left Rome, and his hostel, with great memories (or lack thereof as the case may be.) There, I was sitting outside of a circle of maybe a dozen young, enthusiastic, and rapidly, increasingly intoxicated American, Australian, and French backpackers using the internet when I heard a girl say to her friend, “oh my gosh, you must be like the oldest person here. You’re like almost 23,” before looking around, settling her gaze on me, and then saying, “well, except for maybe you, right? How old are you?” I turned slowly and replied evenly, “30,” at which point the room fell silent for a moment before they all turned back around and continued their party without me.

Dan had his fair share of stories too, and this simple common ground led to more sharing, suggestions for onward travel, and of course, one of my favorite topics, what the future may look like. Dan, who is from Scotland, and Monica, who is from Denmark, had just packed up all their belongings and moved from London to, well, the road. They, like both Young and I, were essentially homeless. We talked about figuring out where to live next, how to find work, and the difficulties in constantly re-settling in new places. Though daunting, it was their attitude about moving about that struck me most. Instead of focusing on what was hard, Dan and Monica seem to have the attitude that most global nomads have: don’t think too much, just do it, and trust that things will work out as they should. I couldn’t agree more, although it’s a bit hard to put into practice a lot of the time.

In all, I don’t think we spoke with Dan and Monica for more than thirty minutes over the course of 12 hours. The conversation we did have though, left an impression on me, and I found them, like many others, to be people I would love to see again. Given the circumstances through which these encounters occur (everyone is traveling after all) it’s not unlikely that we could actually keep in touch and see each other again. Yet, despite the best of intentions and the most sincere promises made while traveling, the truth is, you never know who will actually end up being a friend in the end. It is sort of like a crap-shoot. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose – and sometimes people who you really wish you could stay friends with fall by the wayside and others that you never would have expected become wonderful and unexpectedly good friends.

I certainly don’t know where the half-hour of conversation with Dan and Monica will lead. It’s been a week, and no contact has been made. Odds are, we probably will not stay in touch, but I long ago gave up trying to predict the future of these chance encounters. Moreover, I stopped having expectations and feeling disappointed when things didn’t work out. Instead, I figured out that each encounter was beautiful for what it was – a shared moment in time that was unique and could never be duplicated. Now, like many global nomads before me, I have learned to appreciate each experience for itself, and to trust that things always workout as they should in the end.