Ahh, in Vientienne again, head swimming from the 17 hour bus, tuk tuk, motorbike, bus, minivan to get here…and it strangely feels like home.  I swore I was done with Asia, but it doesn't seem to be done with me. 

I'm considering some more wanderings at the moment (on top of the 10 months that I'll already have been wandering once I'm tentatively scheduled to "get a real job")…I just don't seem to be finished here at all.  And I know that the debts , back taxes and tickets…plus all that American Dream stuff should be important.  It's this vague and fuzzy deadline (much like my biological clock) tick tocking softly from the middle of my brain. 

Osaka in the Cherry blossom season seems all too important to put the brakes on. 

Judging by the crows feet begginning around my eyes; the time has come where I am no longer any spring chicken.  My youth is quickly waning.

Indeed.

I looked at this girl, while waiting with stinking british backpacker kids, for my visa to get processed who was, of course,  delicious.   Young, completely disrespectful to the conservative culture here, no bra, shoulders, belly, hips and tits hanging out… naturally you just wanted to nibble on her; and I wasn't the only one either. 

I recollected a moment about a month ago, where crazy (and equally scantily dressed) American girls were dancing on the tables in the rain.  IT was a merry site, and everyone enjoyed watching them.  I considered to myself how this is something I never would have had second thoughts about a few years ago…I would have hopped up there with these chewy ladies and danced right along with them, (however  hoping one of them would slip and fall on my face).  Though these days, it's not that the capability, nor desire are there for the performance, only that I would have to be paid to do such a thing. 

So in effect I feel almost shy.  But the idea of me and shy don't seem to go very well together.  And if you know even 5% about me…( insert chuckle here).

There's this pure sweet innocence about these types of things that I simply do not posess anymore.  My allure is all too calculated and I am too aware of it's power to give it away as a free show without something I want being given in return.  I believe I've been affected by   the price on sexuality and being paid to take my clothes off since I was 18. It's  completely changed my idea of these "free" performances which the "girls gone wild" generation has cultivated.

Instead, I walk across the border, and a Liberian man asks me to share a taxi with him.  I smile and ask how much.  "300 Baht"

"We can just take the local bus over here, for about 30 baht." I say.  So we stroll together to the bus and decide to sit down with these older expat men.  There is no need to rush in a country where no one rushes.  And aren't we parched from traveling so long in this heat?  Ah yes, let us have a drink with these  unsavory looking types, with their equally unsavory looking Asian escorts…and I feel right at home.  We have French, English, Laotian and Thai rolling off our tongues.

I am drinking a sprite (as I have decided to stop drinking alcohol) but enjoy the delicious faces of relief and pleasure as Beer Lao is poured in glasses with ice, and "I love you" rolls off everyone's tongue, and a smile off everyone's face. 

Yes, let us 6 split a taxi into town.  Let me roll up to my special guest house with a happy smile on my face, and good conversation from these people who I've just met.  We are all adults, not children.  We arrive in a leather seated minivan, and want clean rooms and don't mind paying a bit more for them.

My eyes are clear and bright from my 16 days at the temple.  And my smile is irresistably infectious. 

My debt and duty to relieve it will always be there.  But I'm no child anymore.  Indeed I am not.  I'm in the moment these days where one of the first questions asked is if I have children, and instead of the response of "good"  the words "Why not?" come out of people's mouths.

Not for me.  I will be a great aunt.  I will love every child I encounter.  But I do not want one of my own. 

Osaka, Indonesia, Montreal, Hong Kong, New York, La Linea…How do I fit them all in?