Travel bug

I travel too fast, or don't I? Traveling can be measured by distance or time. Let's call it height and width. No, don't. I don't like the connotations width brings along with it. Just call it time and distance.

On the one hand, I'm sacrificing time in one place in order to cover a greater amount of distance. I don't know exactly why. Even when I plan to stay in any one place for longer than four days, I end up leaving after two or three. So what am I missing out on? Fellow travellers tell me that I travel too fast. "Dude man, you miss out on the local vibes." Maybe I am.

But in the physics of backpacking, time and distance do not stand in a congruent relationship. That is, the distance covered over a certain amount of time does not exercise an effect on the actual amount of time, in days and hours, being traveled. Reversely, time does determine a possible amount of measurable distance. In traveling for one week (let's say, at a Cambodian night bus pace) amount of distance is restrained by amount of time.

Being as it is that I only have three months and twenty days to travel a huge portion of Asia, distance, or the amount thereof, is the only factor, of which within a certain range I can control. Perhaps I could have spent eight days in podunk Penang (instead of two) and started memorizing local rooster crowing patterns, but those other six days were simply spread over a greater amount of distance, not lost.

So have I really missed out on something? Does the hash-crazed, pseudo-hippie from Manchester have some quantum advantage over me for sleeping 14 hours a day in the same roach hotel? I don't think so. Sure I travel fast, probably for several reasons, but generally I figure the same amount of time spread over a greater distance is more gratifying than simply compounding similar experiences in one location. Plus, it distracts me from missing you guys the entire time.

*end internal monologue*