Peter's Notes | Snapshots

Peter is 70, well-travelled, and not remotely done yet. These are his Notes — small observations from the road.

“Jobs fill your pocket, adventure fills your soul” – Jamie Lyn Beatty.

If you feel that you’ve missed out somehow on seeing the world then DECADES could be the travel opportunity that you have been waiting for. Most of us find a career, perhaps a marriage, or two, children, mortgage, garden, pets and so many other things that one can turn around in later decades and perhaps think that one is happy with that but there must be something more. If you’ve only ever been on family holidays, perhaps never been out of Europe, then committing to spending time and money for yourself, accepting the adventures you never had time for in your younger years is no small matter. Many things may make you pause and perhaps turn away from an adventure.

Among my own moments for pause were “who will feed the chickens”, “what will my family think”, “can I really afford it” and “what happens if I am unwell”? A big one for me was can I really afford it?

But that wasn’t the real question. Over the weeks that I considered contacting DECADES I came to view the money pot that I had and the long list of things it could be spent on differently. I decided that buying things was just that. How much pleasure could I really get from repainting the house or putting solar on the roof? Did we really need a new car or could the one that we had last a few more years, and probably past my ability to drive.

Having spent years spending money for the common family good I decided to become selfish.

On your DECADES adventure you will create many memories. My medical friend informs me that I am creating engrams. Who knew? I thought I was just recalling sights and sounds, flavours and textures.

Here are some of my most memorable snapshots from four weeks travelling in Vietnam.

• Bridges. Three-pole bridges across rice field irrigation channels.
• Buffaloes. Buffaloes pulling enormous stacks of cut rice on the smallest of two wheeled carts.
• Cages. Dozens of cages hanging from a hole-in-the-wall ceiling each containing a brightly coloured finch.
• Chips. Eating terrible "powdered cheese" chips sat next to an elaborate family shrine.
• Coats. In Hanoi scooter riders sheltering behind padded coats specially made to fit over the handlebars and fairings as protection from the cold and rain, in 32°.
• Combines. Petrol strimmers to cut the rice stalks, elsewhere rice combine harvesters.
• Cows. Cows being herded by two guys on motorbikes down a road in Hoi An.
• Ducks. Hundreds of white ducks being driven from one set of rice paddies to another.
• Egrets. White egrets stalking prey in the rice paddies, but other paddies with white bags on sticks that look, from a distance, like egrets.
• Haircut. A boy with a severe buzz haircut cycling home from school with his little brother standing on the rear mud-guard.
• Homes. Homes that are businesses, the front room used as a shop front, massage parlour, almost anything.
• Hotels. Scores of hotels whose construction has been abandoned on the beach road of Da Nang.
• Rice 1. Rice drying in the road on plastic sheets. Many taking up half the width of the road.
• Rice 2. Rice stalks drying in stacks around a tall central pole.
• Sack. On an Ho Chi Minh City pavement a small rice sack opened out with cooked waste rice drying. The Casson's girls tell me it is collected by the poor from many restaurants.
• School children. A flood of school children burst from the school gates as I cycle by. Neatly dressed in red and white checkered dresses with a kerchief around their necks; smiles and waves and hellos.
• Scooter 1. A child, enveloped in a white hooded cape, stands on the seat of the scooter between her father and mother.
• Scooter 2. Scooter riders texting with one hand as they negotiate the traffic.
• Scooter 3. Scooter riders enclosed entirely in long sleeves and trousers, masks and helmets with only their eyes visible.
• Shrimps. A lady selling the smallest of shrimps from a round woven tray. In the other tray a set of ancient balances.
• Stairs. Narrow stairs in my local hole-in-the-wall bar leading to the family space.
• Tailors. Tailors' sweat shops in the back street of Hue. Far from the glamorous tailors' shops where the sales and measurements are made. Ancient sewing machines, steam presses, the floor covered in cut off cloth and debris. Sleeping mattresses stacked against a rear wall.
• Touch. A child touches my arm as I walked in the early morning. Asked me in English who I was and where I came from and was gone with a smile and shy wave.
• Villas. Modern three storey villas surrounded by waste land and tin shacks.
• Water pipe. A cycle tuk-tuk rider seizing my just-purchased water pipe. Cleaning it, fitting it together properly then dashing across the road to a friend and coming back with a pinch or two of strong tobacco. Then beaming widely as he shows me how to smoke and I choke on the strong fumes.

You will create your own pot of memories, I hope they will bring you smiles in later years – happy adventuring.