It has been some time since the last check-in because I have kept myself busy. It has been a wild ride: finished up 4th year of medical school, enjoying the last summer holiday in university, starting final year on the wards and A&E, heading back home for a 5-week elective, returning back to London for more of medical school and finally spending an amazing Christmas break in Morocco. And to answer the comment you haven't mentioned yet, yes those were excuses for being lazy and not taking stock of my travels. But anyway here I am, spending the first evening of the new decade looking back on my last few trips with #2020vision.
Family trips are by no means a foreign concept to anyone; traveling with the entire family and all them siblings seems like a fairly common thing to do, innit? What I have realised over the last few trips is that traveling with the parents are a whole different affair altogether. The reason why I never really noticed that before is because of 2 things:
1) It has been a long while since I traveled with the parents, and
2) I have never traveled by myself with parents before.
One series of travels, two vacations with my own parents and another with my friend's parents later, I finally figured out what I feel about traveling with parents. I have to leave out any salacious details about my experiences to protect the people involved. It also means that this post is probably one of the more boring ones to exist here, so forgive me for I have failed to reward your reading efforts with sufficient entertainment.
I have had excellent experiences traveling alone (in my last posts) and with different friends over the years in medical school. How different could traveling with parents be? Turns out, plenty different.
The most glaring difference is that the power dynamics with parents are completely different. With friends, everything is way more laidback; we are equals; we can agree to disagree. I get along with them and they will always have my back if things go south. Now I know what you might be thinking: I sound like I am describing exactly family. Perhaps. The friends I have made over the years are my source of comfort; they have seen me through the worst of it and some more. I have no qualms calling them the family I have chosen, but I digress.
With parents, especially Asian parents, it is more like a subservient relationship. There is an unspoken consensuus that you will have to wait on you parents. Because yknow, parents have painstakingly sacrificed so much of their lives to raise us and it is only normal to give back to them. Now I am not saying that all that are lies or that I disagree with any of those statements. What I am saying is that I have been too used to trips abroad where I get to do what I want to do, see what I want to see and eat what I want to eat without feeling tied down. On the other hand, my experiences with parents have been fraught with indecision and stubbornness in all the worst ways. Even deciding what to eat was a nightmare in itself: "What about ramen? Too thick."
"What about pork cutlets? Too greasy."
"What about yakitori? Not feeling it."
"So what do you want? I don't know, you decide."
...... I'm out. But I can't just leave them to do my own thing.
Well, f***.
However, one of the good things about traveling with parents is that comfort is definitely assured. The older adults have lived out their lives, experienced enough hardships along the way and god forbid, are completely done taking any more. Oh, that is just my parents? I somehow highly doubt that, but believe what you may. Usually the older adults have made enough money in life to afford 4-star hotels and luxury desert tour packages in the Zagora desert, for example. Not implying that I am getting all of that for free but traveling with parents, not just your own, is an almost certain guarantee of a comfy time.
At the end of the day, this last half a year has taught me of the parent trap. (Though now that I am aware of the trap it fails to be a trap anymore, right?) What it is is essentially a trade-off: freedom and carefree for luxury and decadence. I have been accustomed to my independence for the last couple of years that I have taken that for granted now and that is why I feel the price of the parent trap more than ever. But that is a lesson for the future. And on that note, I'm signing off here because there is plenty of books to hit before finals season comes knocking on my door.
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