Sa Pa, that is a small, quiet mountain village in the North of Vietnam, just some miles from the Chinese border, far from any big city. A good place to go trekking. A good place to sort out ones mind and let my emotions settle down after i got the sad news that the father of my boyfriend died. A good place to decide how this journey is going to continue now.

The next place to go to would have been Hue, the capital city of the Nguyen emperors, and then the lusciously green and beautiful Mekong Delta. Places that made my face light up until two days ago. Places that have lost their meaning now. That's why the next stations of my journey won't be Hue and Mekong and then Cambodia, but Bangkok and Frankfurt and then home.

So in one way, this is the end of my journey. And in another way, it isn't. On a larger scale, flying home i simply the next step in the long journey called life. A journey that probably doesn't even end when our body dies - at least that's what most of the people in Asia believe. For them, a lifetime is nothing but another step on the way towards enlightment, towards the one destination you can't buy a Lonely Planet guidebook for.

- DL, 2003, Wernau am Neckar -

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