…tell him about your plans. I fully realized the truth of this statement during my journey. Making any plans is next to useless, as you most likely end up doing something else anyway. Hard deadlines as flight tickets and visa dates provide some sort of guidelines, but even those are not set in stone. The deadline of my second entry to China is on 15th March, but now I am considering staying in South East Asia for a little longer instead and getting a new visa later if I decide to go back to China. Oh well, it is almost two months until then, so who knows what I will end up doing.
I came to Penang for two reasons: a) to do a vipassana retreat and b) figure out what to do next. The third reason was to get my digital camera fixed while I would be sitting in the retreat. Sounded very neat and logical at the time. After spending a couple of days here, it became clear to me that I want to get back to Hat Yuan to rendez-vous with Finnish posse (hello Urkki, Johanna, Noora ja Ilmari). As soon as possible, too. Then I found out about the annual Thaipusam festival happening here on Thursday and it seemed like something really worth seeing. A few days before the festival is too short time to do a retreat and too long time to just bum around the city. Luckily (or not so) the fate of my camera was unknown until today, so I could not just disappear into the world of vipassana, nor leave Penang. Given these two factors, I realized that the retreat is not doable at this point and it is better to stick to the festival and getting the camera back and then head back to Thailand. No regrets about the retreat too.
So far so good. But as life is full of surprises, I just found out that Sven Väth is playing in Zouk, Singapore on 28th January, so now it is really tempting to travel Maleysia for the next ten days and end up in Singapore for quality German techno. I must admit that it sounds almost as good as going back to Hat Yuan. Aaargh, decision making and missed opportunities. Just lovely.