Pairs Of Children Make My Day

Have I ever had a bad day while traveling? Is like asking myself, do I eat ice cream?

All the time.

Medical mishaps, immigration errors, bed bugs, fallouts with new friends and old friends. I can honestly say that in less than two years on the road, I’ve outlasted a potpourri of infections that have afflicted me from head to toe.

Shit happens on the road, and at a seemingly relentless speed.

But a better question is, has the sight of some cute kids instantly made my day better?

All the time.

Just hours before drafting this post, I saw a tumultuous group of children training on baby unicycles at the local track, located in the center of a busy Chinese city.

They ran through drills with their coach. They raced down the lanes with two legs, with one leg, and at times aborting mission in one gleeful leap, leaving the unicycle horizontal on the asphalt with its wheel still spinning.

There are few travel scenes I find more picturesque and uplifting than children, specifically two children, busy tending to their own business, frolicking in their natural habitat.

Because of language and shyness from me and from them, I’ll never know where they are going or where they came from.

Are they siblings? Are they best friends? Will they give speeches at each other’s weddings?

Some curiosities are better left as just that—a flitting thought that comes and goes with a question mark trailing behind it.

Be it with these playful pagoda pals in His-paw, Myanmar.

 

 

Or these fishy little Filipinas on Coron Island, Philippines.

 

 

Or these boys in beanies at Apu Vinicunca, Peru.

 

 

And then there were the originals, two cheeky Chinese children up Mount Hua in Shaanxi, China.