Alone in the Airport

I have a Google Music subscription. I pay $10 a month to stream unlimited music wherever there is the internet or to download music to my phone for those rare moments of disconnectivity. One of the playlists on Google Music is called “Alone in the Airport.” Google describes this collection of songs this way:

“You sit down at your gate and are filled with nostalgia for the place and people you're leaving. This melancholy collection of songs was made for that bittersweet moment.”

This pretty much sums up my mood right now as I wait to check in for my flight to Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon depending on your preference. I’ve spent a lot of time alone in airports recently and will continue to do so in the next few months. Notable ones in the US include Newark, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Austin, Nashville, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Oakland, San Diego, Sacramento and of course the best, Portland. These are the familiar ones where I breeze through TSA Pre-Check and text with friends or family while I wait for my plane. I know the drill.

This time is different. I don’t know how many more airports I will be visiting or where they will be. In the check in all I am surrounded by a chorus of thousands voices speaking languages I don’t understand. I’m road weary after just nine days. I’m sad to be leaving behind friends who I feel I just met and many of whom I will never see again. And also missing those friends and faces half a world away who will be waking up shortly after I land in Saigon filling my phone with messages and likes. Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon, a place with so much symbolism for Americans of my parent’s generation they created a second rate musical about it. I don’t know where I’m going, my phone has all this information for me. If I lose it I’m kind of fucked. But not really. Does it have enough juice?

I breeze through security even though I have a pocket knife and too many liquids stashed in various places of my carry ons. What was before so foreign is now more familiar. Shops selling overpriced trinkets and junk food, a Burger King and a Starbucks.

I pull up a seat at the bar with other westerners and order a plate of overpriced French Fries and a club soda. I’ve got a low grade cold and don’t want to make it worse with beer. I change the background of my desktop, removing the photo of a house I have just vacated for a year and replace it with a favorite of mine from Angkor Wat.

These are the experiences of travel that never make it to Instagram. The sleepless nights in an unfamiliar room. Unpacking and repacking your suitcase, checking for the fifth time to make sure I have my passport. To think that this time yesterday I was cavorting through the ruins of Angkor Wat. In two hours I’ll be arriving in a place where I don’t know how to say Hello or Thank You. I am nowhere and everywhere all at once. Welcome to Saigon.