It's A Small World After All

As I mentioned in my post concerning my hostel life as a long-termer and the interesting people I have had the pleasure (and occasionally, displeasure) of interacting with, I have had a lot of it's-a-small-world-after-all experiences (heretofore referred to as a "small world experience"). 

I don't really know if some unseen hand of fate has arranged these chance meetings for us, but I have without a doubt had several, statistically staggering, encounters abroad. And I know I'm not the only one. I've talked to several people who, while traveling in different countries, have happened upon someone from their past, whether it be someone from school, a previous job, or even a familial relation. It seems to happen quite a bit considering how statistically improbable it actually is.

While a lot of my small world experiences have been second or third-hand connections (i.e. meeting someone who knows a friend of mine or meeting someone who knows a friend of a friend, respectively) but I won't go into those. There are only two that I feel are considerably noteworthy as being small world experiences where I ran into old friends in unlikely places.



Rick in Vietnam

By far the most chance small world experience I had was when I was drinking in the "backpacker district" of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

I was at a makeshift bar drinking and playing cards with friends when, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a familiar face walk by with a guitar strapped to his back.

Taking a chance, I conjured the name of this person who was momentarily residing in the purgatory between anonymity and recognition and yelled, "RICK!!!"

Well, that turned around and quickly became the Rick I knew from my time teaching English in Shijiazhuang, China.

Rick is from Manchester, England and he had been living in Shijiazhuang a couple of years by the time I had arrived.

Besides being drinking buddies, Rick and I performed (playing guitar and singing, as well as lip-synching and dancing) for the local elite at some Christmas banquets in the few ritzy hotels that Shijiazhuang had to offer (intrigued? If you want to read more about this experience, then check out my post about it here).

Well, Rick came over to our table and we excitedly caught up with each other. We talked of old times, news of the remnants of the old gang back in the Shiz, and what our plans were for the future.

Sometime afterwards, Rick decided to take out his guitar and started performing a variety of songs. This attracted the drunk holidaymakers stumbling around the street who would join in as Rick's chorus. We stayed there until the sun came up.

(Note: surprisingly enough, we would actually run into Rick again at the airport. We were flying to Hanoi and he was flying to Phu Quoc, which is a beautiful island in Vietnam.)



Mike in Malaysia

After I was through with my year teaching English in China, I decided to travel to Guilin and Yangshuo, China, as well as Krabi and Ko Phi Phi, Thailand and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Having been such a novice to international backpacking at this point, I bought all of my flights last minute and did next to no planning. This proved to be to my disadvantage not only in terms of costs, but also eventually of getting from Guilin back to Shijiazhuang (I ended up having to purchase a somewhat expensive flight from Guilin to Shijiazhuang's small regional airport instead of taking one of the many sold-out trains). I still bow my head in shame when I recount how irresponsible I was with the planning for that trip...and this coming from a person who is an obsessive planner!

Anyway, enough of that tangent.

I had planned on meeting up with my friend from Shijiazhuang, Nate. At 19, Nate was the youngest one of the group I ran around the Shiz with. Nate had finished a year living and working in Australia, and then moved to Shijiazhuang in order to work at a daycare and to improve his Mandarin. When Nate was in middle school, he had the option of choosing one of several foreign language courses. Nate, admittedly not having foresight but rather having a "that might be cool" moment, chose Mandarin out of the pool of more traditional American school system languages like Spanish, German, and French.

Nate and I were scheduled to arrive at the same day on separate flights. He arrived earlier than I did, and after I checked in we decided to go out for dinner. After that we came back, and he and I both noticed a lanky, moppy-haired guy sitting at the hostel's computer. Before opening the door to our hostel, I think I said something like, "Is that Mike?! No way." If I didn't say it out loud, I most certainly thought it.

I opened the door and yelled, "MIKE?!"

His moppy head swung around and his eyes got big. He yelled, "AHHHHHHHH!!!" as greeted each other.

Mike was a fellow English teacher in Shijiazhuang. He taught a prestigious language high school relatively close to the university I taught at. We found it so hilarious that someone with as thick of a Scottish accent as Mike had was even allowed to teach English at this high school. I'm sure after hiring him, the administration of the school collectively put their heads in their hands. Mike had a sharp, dry wit characteristic of many of the Scottish that I've met...and not to push stereotypes, but a profound ability for binge drinking (to be fair, at ages 23 and 24, I was certainly no stranger to this).

We both left China not having any idea we were going to be in Malaysia at the same time (again, partly because I did such a piss poor job planning).

After the initial ecstatic shock was over, I vividly remember exclaiming, "We're getting drunk tonight!" And indeed that's what we did.

The next morning, I was flying back to China move out of my apartment and wrap up my wild and crazy year teaching English there. I would not be seeing Mike back in China. He was heading directly back to Scotland after doing a bit of traveling.

I'll never forget waking up Mike in the hostel dorm room to tell him goodbye. I shook him and forcefully whispered his name:

"Mike...hey, Mike! I'm leaving to catch my plane."

Disheveled and hungover, Mike looked at me directly in the eyes and said in his thick Scottish accent, "It was emotional, mate."

For those of you that know, that was the last line of the movie Trainspotting. Even considering I knew that at the time, I thought (and still think) that a very fitting, yet concise, way to summarize my year in China.

*****

I want these small world experiences to have some meaning. I want them to be profound in the literary or cinematic sense when the main character happens upon his lost lover or old friend from the past who helps put his or her life into perspective. Not that I'm in any need of having someone else put my life into perspective. So, maybe this just shows the extent to which I have been deluded by Hollywood into thinking that my life is less my own narrative and more of a movie with stock plots and scripts.

OK, I don't think that's actually completely true.

A part of me just feels as though these small world experiences are just too much of a coincidence not to mean anything. This, coming from someone who doesn't have any belief in religion, fate, or luck.

For now, I'll just embrace the shared pleasure that so often accompanies serendipity.