Unlonely planet

Trips are pilgrimages to see my chosen family.

A kaleidoscope of blankets was strewn all over the floor. The red ones were lava. Don’t touch those. The blue ones were water. Can’t step on them either. In the middle of the mess: a lone bolster. It was the log that could get us from the living room to a fort we built in my bedroom.

Vicky made a run for it. The distance was no match for a seven-year-old’s agility. Her left foot leaped from the pastel pink foam tile and she landed squarely on the bolster. She made the journey seem like a walk in the park.

I ran straight after her. Inside our fort — which you could only enter with a password, of course — we read our own copies of The New Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley. Vicky had brought some copies with her from Singapore all the way to my Indonesian home. Her mother hoped that the five copies were enough to last her two-week stay here.

I had moved back to Indonesia just a couple of years prior, a sudden uproot of the friendships and sleepovers that filled in my weekends. Vicky’s summer in my Indonesian home taught me that friendships don’t have to end when someone moves. With a bit of planning, we can take trips set out by Lonely Planet and make them less lonely.

Milwaukee.

(twenty years on…)

When my friends made the chaotic decision to relocate, I knew that I had my travel plans set out for me: Milwaukee. New York. Toronto. Melbourne.

I needed to know three things to plan a trip: the dates, the flight, and the accommodation. The dates were dependent on my job. I could take time off during a lull-ish period. Flights were a bit easier. Hong Kong is a transit hub, so many airlines pass through. As for accommodation? That’s dependent on my friends. More specifically, it’s dependent on when their house is open to accept guests.

For the last few trips, I swapped out of booking hostels or Airbnbs and instead crashed in my friends’ flats. I’ve stayed in mattresses in the living room that doubled as a really large dog bed. I’ve slept in a queen size bed with my friend. I’ve stayed on a couch by the front door, woken up by their foster dog in the morning. I’ve also slept underneath a bookcase where my friends modified the bottom shelf into a guest bed. (It’s not a competition, but this has to be the coolest one.)

Singapore.

There’s a lot of comfort in staying in an Airbnb or a hotel room. It’s nice to come back to a space where I can journal in the evenings or roll around in a big mattress. And I don’t have to worry about grabbing the wrong toothbrush when I’m barely awake. But what’s equally nice is spending quality time with friends I don’t get to see otherwise. To stay up late and just chat without worrying how I’m going to get home. It feels like a sleepover.

There’s also something really nice about seeing my friends in spaces they have molded to be their own. It’s great to go out and do touristy stuff with them, but I found the mundane more charming. I got to walk the dogs with them, even though I’ve never walked dogs before and I was definitely not dragged by Mark’s two excited jindo-corgis in the Milwaukee suburbs. I had coffee Nadia brewed with her Moka Pot, the caffeine steam intermingling with the spring New York air. I indulged in Zoey’s collection of orange summer wine, shipped locally within Ontario.

The moments of quality time in their homes are so simply beautiful that I think about them often. One was when Nadia and I decided to go shopping instead of seeing the Statue of Liberty. She was a fashion girlie. I was not. Could it be any more obvious? We went to Artizia and found a pair of elegant polyester pleated brown pants that fit well on the hips but were too long for me. Normally I’d leave the store without buying it, but Nadia said she could fix that. On our way back, we grabbed birria tacos from a truck and ate it on her study desk. It was the best tacos of my life. Afterwards, she taught me how to alter a pair of pants. She measured out two inches on one leg and cut them off.

New York.

I remember Nadia marking the cutting line on the other leg with a yellow chalk pen, a stash of sewing pins nearby, her hands deftly folding the fabric in for a neat hem. I remember playing Mario Kart with Mark in Milwaukee’s oldest gay bar and losing horribly. How none of those memories wouldn’t have happened had I not boarded a flight from Hong Kong and crashed with them. How I want to make these trips annual, even if it’s just for a few days. Constant texting is special — we share so much of our growth over WhatsApp. Sharing a space with them is sublime.

Traveling no longer became the pursuit of monuments, museums, or McDonald’s local specials. Observation decks lost their appeal. The banger Instagram sunset posts became irrelevant.

These trips instead became pilgrimages to see my chosen family.

I can’t go too long without one. At the moment I have an open suitcase in the middle of my flat stuffed with film rolls, a dozen copies of my art book, and hiking shoes. My next destination is my childhood best friend’s home Down Under.

nat

warned me that Melbourne has four seasons in one day, but what’s a trip without the hassle? Anything for the pursuit of an unlonely planet.

Thank you to Write of Passage friends who make writing less lonely:

Kelly Davis

, Roxanne Franz, Ian Black, Josh Ponelat,

Anna Archakova

, Hannah Gibson, and

Karena

.

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Looking back: Mockbusters, or B-list versions of popular movies, were popular in the 90s. Many are still being produced today. Source: Goulet Pencast.

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Update log:

• 🎂 Grateful for all the birthday love.

• 📖 Reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson (25% completed).

• 💃🏻 Hosted a watch party for the finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 16. The screams we scrumpt at the screen!

• 🔍 My friend and I did a scavenger hunt around the central business district. What a fun way to explore a district that’s been explored many times before. (I even work there!)

• 🎥 Attended a screening of All Shall Be Well. My goodness there wasn’t a dry set of eyes in the theatre.

• 🧳 I have not packed for my Melbourne trip and I’m lowkey stressed but it’s okay I’ll get there.

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