"Are you a Type A planner?" my friend asked.
I denied it immediately. Meanwhile, open on my laptop was my Notion database with a carefully plotted Vietnam route.
The plan was perfect: a smooth north-to-south journey, starting in Hanoi and ending near Ho Chi Minh.
Then the Gods of Fallible Plans laughed.
Things started going wrong
For weeks, I had been charging my phone with only a power bank. Two days before leaving Koh Tao, I finally paid to get the charging port fixed.
Victory!
The same afternoon, I climbed into the dive boat with my phone in my pocket. Saltwater: 1, Phone: 0. This was not the plan.
But I had been traveling for almost a year, and worse had happened. So I kept moving, phoneless:
- Ferry to the mainland: 2 hours
- Bus to Bangkok: 10 hours
- Hotel check-in: 2:30 AM
- Brief panic: "Wait, is this the wrong hotel?" (Thankfully, it just had two names)
The next day, I bought a used phone at a mall. Since there wasn't enough time to set it up, the shop ordered me a Grab ride and sent the driver a photo of me to identify. Thankfully, I looked enough like me.
I made it to the airport with just an hour before departure. Shockingly, they said I could still make the flight—until they noticed my visa was still pending.
Denied.
So I booked a new flight and spent a week in Kuala Lumpur in limbo. It was my last day on my Thailand visa, so the timing couldn't have been better... or worse.
Not exactly an elegant spreadsheet
This trip was far from what I had envisioned, but I wasn't upset. It was a setback, and funny in hindsight since I often end up booking trips the day before anyway.
In Kuala Lumpur, I didn't explore much. Instead, I meditated, thought about what's next, and began the project you're reading now: Getting Unlost. And ate some delicious foods while working on it.
But things kept going wrong
Even after the visa was approved, getting to Vietnam wasn't smooth. Multiple accommodation bookings fell through. When I finally arrived in Hanoi, I sat in a coffee shop for hours waiting for my booking—or any sign of life from the host. None came.
Of course, it worked out fine. It always does.
So maybe that was the point
Plans are useful, but travel doesn't care about your spreadsheets. Not even the sexiest spreadsheets.
You don't get unlost by sticking to rigid itineraries. You get unlost by surviving the mess when things fall apart and learning something about yourself in the process.
And if you're lucky, you laugh about it later, with a couple of funny pictures on your new phone to prove it.