orange. friendship. silence.

i’m doing it again and sharing a very random picture with you. actually it is not so random as the travelettes are doing another instagram challenge and this time it is all about autumn. tricky one for me as we finally had the first visit of summer and getting cold and cosy is the last thing on my mind. but nevertheless i wanted to show that cape town can do fall colours as well, so here is my version of turning orange.

since last week i have come, again, to the conclusion that happiness and contentment really is something that doesn’t magically happen just because the sun is out. though it helps, it is an active process, something i knew before, but needed to remind myself of. so i am working on it and life is not as bad as my last post may have sounded. a lot of people seemed a bit worried about me. thanks for caring and the giraffe pictures!

however one comment on my last post really made me think. i mentioned how i felt i was losing a friend and how he hadn’t been in touch to resolve an issue i was having with him. a girl commented how she had also lost of a friend, not because of text massages, but because he died as she wrote. boom. that hit me in the stomach. it made me incredibly sad for her and it made me think. think about the whole situation from with my friend all angles again. i questioned myself if i had just written carelessly, giving the impression i didn’t speak to my friend because of some silly, unanswered text messages, or had i been carelessly with my friendship?

fortunately, i guess, i can say that no, i might be careless with my spelling at times, but i have not been careless with my friendship. in fact i don’t think i have ever been careless with a friendship. sometimes friendships have just come to an end without it being anyone’s fault and i have accepted that. and if there is an issue, i will say something. i will fight for my friend and if necessary i will fight with a friend to resolve things. i know that i am loyal and once something is resolved i don’t hold grudges. i am not someone to lose a friend over unanswered text massages, but i have also realized that eventually it all goes both ways and at some point a friend needs to call you back and acknowledge you and even argue with you.
i had previous relationship with boyfriends not talking, turning into an ice block of silence when there was an issue. i hated it and would do the opposite – yell and scream and cry. which admittedly wasn’t ideal either, but silence…ugh, silence drives me up the walls in any relationship when something needs to be sorted out and spoken about. why are we so afraid to argue with people that we love? surely silence will break any friendship, any relationship much faster than any honest words we could say to each other? to speak or not to speak should that really be a question?

puppy love.

today's post is brought to you by special request. i guess i could have written something about hoi an or how we got lost and had dinner in a dark alley (always get lost and have dinner in dark alleys!) or how this is turning out to be the journey of all the boat trips. but since i got a special request, i thought i should rather focus on another important part of travelling – meeting people – and introduce you to the post requester.

there is wifi all over vietnam, except in our hotel right now. so little social media addicts that we all are we sat over dinner with our iphones, checking facebook, and basically commenting on what the people across from us at the table were doing online. yes, i it is a bit sad, don't i know it...

ash – who, by the way, was my knight in sweaty armour from my last story - had not only started to read my blog and like it, but was now demanding more and when was the next story coming and what was i doing here eating dinner instead of putting down amusing words. and of course my ego was stroked and so here i am by special request at midnight.

meet ashley from london or ass as the vietnamese tend to pronounce it, which of course one cannot help but adapt. after spontaneously tricking him into being my today's travelette instagram on the topic of 'travel buddy', i thought he deserved a bit of a better introduction than this:

 

(though most of the pictures he jumped into are sort of like the above.)

we met on our first part of the journey in bangkok and to my horror i had to find out that there were people, well, one, who are almost half my age on this trip. this led him to tell me that he doesn't mind being organized and will i please organize him. my therapist would have been proud of me when i declined, but somehow it still stuck that he calls me his mum once in a while (thanks, ass!).

i never thought i would become friends with someone who does that or with whom i don't have anything at all in common with on paper. but sometimes wanting to squeeze someone's cheek will be apparently be enough to start a friendship. and before you shake your head or mentally high five me, i am not talking about cheek squeezing in a mrs robinson way, but rather in a puppy's cheek squeezing way.

ash, i'm not being condescending, but i will call you a puppy. because you can sleep anywhere and eat anything. but mainly for your enthusiasm you bring along for everything: rocking a dingy piano bar, enjoying angkor wat and angkor what, eating baked beans and pringles in the pool or doing homework with the restaurant owner's kid. i envy that enthusiasm, i want more of this in my life. thanks for showing me how it's done!

Collection for a sad girl.

My friend is sad. There was a boy and then the boy was no more and we all know how these things sometimes go so I don’t really need to explain. Now she is sad and she doesn't want to speak about it, which is fine, we all know that feeling too. I hate the fact though that I cannot sit next to her on the couch, not speaking and just refill her tequila glass in regular intervals. Because I think that’s what friends are for… to not speak, to share silence and to make themselves useful as bartenders, who ask no questions.

This not an option right now thanks to 14787 kilometres between us according to Google Map as well as multiple tolls, some other countries and one ferry.

Some girls when sad might take comfort in puppy pictures and Paulo Coelho quotes and hey, I don’t judge. Frank Sinatra was my non-judgemental hero when he said: "Basically, I am for anything that gets you through the night - be it prayer, tranquillizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels." So if it is puppy pictures for you, it’s fine by me. I just don’t think this would work for my friend as we are more the slightly cynical type that agrees Mr Coelho has been a bit over-quoted of late and that giraffes make everything better, not puppies. So I put some other things together for her. I will call it a collection of things to make you feel better when some stupid boy made you sad and I cannot be there to sit next to you on the couch, not speaking and just refilling your tequila glass in regular intervals. Don’t even ask me how some of these things ended up in the collection, it might not all make perfect sense to the outsider. And yes, I am fully aware there are a good few inspirational quotes and baby animals. You can judge away if you must. I just saw them, thought of her and hope that they might just bring the tiniest smile to her in lieu of tequila...

Find the complete collection here.