Dan submitted this post and now I’m craving lemon chicken…Enjoy! – cb

Traveling isn’t always about doing something different. Sometimes it’s about doing the same things differently.

For example, in 2005 I took a two week tour of Scotland and England. In Scotland we stayed in the town of Ballater (population: “Yeah, I know her”) where I shared a bus to the train station with 40 children who first had to be dropped off at school. Coming from New York City, where kids don’t ride public transportation or go to school, I considered this experience something different.

However, in England I stayed in the heart of London. I rode the tube, visited museums and ate at a variety of eclectic restaurants. Every morning I went to the Starbucks across the street for a latte. It was exactly the same as my life in New York, except twice as expensive. I considered this doing the same things differently.

I won’t say the Scotland portion of the trip was intrinsically better (certainly not the part with the haggis), yet I couldn’t help but feel that the London portion was unnecessary, like I could have been doing the same thing back home without converting currency or using a map. Still, there was something about taking all the enjoyable parts of my life (and there are many) and doing them somewhere else: my life with a twist. It’s the difference between going to Vegas to have sex with someone new and taking your girlfriend to Vegas to have sex somewhere new.

This is the exact reason why destination weddings are so popular – because lemon chicken is more exciting in Bermuda. It’s a fact. I checked. In the early 80’s, lemon chicken was still exciting here due to its scarcity after the war. Over time, it became more common, thus less exciting. So now even though people still want to get married, throw flowers and do the conga, they just don’t want to get married, throw flowers and do the conga in America. It not only needs to be special, it needs to be different.

The latest extension of this is the disturbing trend of destination adoptions. Like our lemon chicken, our orphans have become unexciting. Couples want to adopt, they just don’t want to adopt here. And why would they? Maybe giving birth at a strip mall off exit 46 would be different and exciting, but adopting a child there? Where’s the novelty in that?

Besides, anything you bring back from vacation is intrinsically special. I’m not criticizing; I do the same thing. The Oxford shirt I bought in London looks the same as my other Oxfords. But I only wear it on special occasions because it’s British. It’s no different than the others, but how I bought it was different. And that’s why I love it. Just like I love my “different” Vietnamese children more than my “boring” American ones.*

* This is just a joke. I have no children, neither the adopted nor the boring kind.

- by Dan Murphy of [redacted] fame