The coffee here at the Nirvana Café tastes like black silk.  The armchairs are faded red velvet. The music is something languid and lonesome, featuring a violin.  Above, a ceiling fan slowly turns.  

I’m going to like it in Saigon.  

Matador friends and family – I’m back, and I missed you guys.  For two months my laptop languished in a metal safe in Phnom Penh while I led a group of high-school students on a rugged travel program in Cambodia.  Now I have a month in Saigon, two cool roommates and an apartment right around the corner from the Nirvana Café.  

Dragons In Cambodia

The program I led in Cambodia was with Where There Be Dragons, a remarkable company that organizes “learning adventures in the developing world”.  The Matador Fund raises money to send exceptional inner-city youth on Dragons programs.  

I can’t say enough great things about Dragons.  Leading the Cambodia program was inspiring, empowering and rewarding.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  

Imagine – my job was to take 12 teenagers from privileged backgrounds into Cambodia and shatter their reality, to show them beauty in simplicity, to press their noses into hardship and ugliness, to push them to discover how far they can go, how much they can do and how easy it is to change the world.

Awake In The World

There was blood and there were tears.  There were moments of exhaustion and uncertainty and exhilaration.  For eight weeks, for every second of every day, I was fully engaged with the world in a way that’s impossible to achieve when traveling solo, let alone when sitting somewhere comfortable with a laptop.

We slept in front of Buddha on a temple floor in a village no foreigners had visited since before the Khmer Rouge, then awoke before dawn to do yoga on a hilltop, salutations to the rising sun.  

We ate in family homes on the banks of the Mekong River. We traveled by pick-up truck, bamboo train, pony cart, tuk tuk, mini-bus and fishing boat.

Losing My Self And Finding Joy

There’s an ancient Tibetan saying that goes:  “Self cherishing is the root of all suffering.”

In Cambodia, I had no time to brood about myself or indulge in distractions.  No beer.  No sleeping late.  No procrastinating.  No lazy Internet surfing.  No chasing girls.  Every moment was infused with a sense of purpose.  I’ve never felt more fulfilled.

Now I’m alone again, responsible to no one but myself.  The challenge is to stay engaged, to find a way to take the inspiration of Dragons and channel it into my writing, my work and my daily routine.  

So, Matador friends and family, I want you to push me.  I want you to inspire me.  I want you to remind me every day that we can be the change we want to see in the world.  

Dragons was a collision with truth, a full-on confrontation with the fact that we all have a responsibility greater than ourselves.  As travelers, we need that profound sense of responsibility, and we need a community to push us to work harder, dream bigger and look out for each other along the way.

Part of me wants to put the laptop back in the safe and engage face-to-face with the real world.  If it wasn’t for Matador, that’s exactly what I’d do.  

But this community is a chance to create something new and powerful, something vibrant and real.  We can challenge each other, support each other and connect with each other.  We can make this community as strong as we want it to be, and carry that energy and passion into projects in the real world.  

I don’t know who’s going to read this.  But I love that I can reach out to you, and you can reach out to me.