Dream analysis: I'm a stranger in a strange land and find some video game deals in a thrift shop

To say that i am a stranger in a strange land in a dream is kind of a reflection of my actual life. Even since moving to SE Asia nearly 20 years ago, I have always been a bit of a stranger when it comes to just being able to interact in my daily life. This is particularly true here in Vietnam because I have put zero effort into learning the local language and even though I have lived here long enough to have completed another college degree, I know almost none of the language. I don't intend to change that either. I know it is lazy but Vietnamese is extremely difficult to the point where almost no one tried to learn to speak it. I can speak Thai, that is my one single-country language that almost no one speaks. I don't need another.

In my dream, language barriers were not the problem though. Even though I can't really put my finger on where I was in the dream, everyone spoke English so that was no the problem. The problem was that I was constantly lost and was walking vast distances because I didn't understand the roads or the bus system and this, this is something that I have encountered in real life many times before the advent of smartphones.

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Instead of not being able to navigate my destination, I instead knew where it was but just knew it was very far down the road north of my position. I think I was looking for a Target which is odd because Target doesn't exist anywhere in Asia as far as I know and I haven't been to one in nearly 2 decades.

As I stared down the road I also noticed that the roads winded all over the place and even though I would catch a glimpse of a bus here and there they were always too far from where I was standing. This reminds me of many instances I have encountered here in Vietnam where according to the app, I was on a bus route but one would never come by. That was a day that I ended up walking nearly 25 km and I never made that mistake again.

The rest of the journey to the Target, which turned out to not be a Target at all, was kind of a blur. I must have fast traveled. When I got in the store it was not like any real Target that exists, it was more like a thrift shop with a bunch of random, mostly 2nd hand products in it.

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One section I found myself in was a section that had a bunch of old gaming consoles in it and this is strange to have this enter my dreams. I played videogames a bit when i was in high school but I am not an avid gamer. I have a PS4 but it is covered in dust and I am not even sure if it works anymore. However, in the dream I was on the fence about whether or not I was going to pay $17.40 for a console with about a dozen games. It's funny the things that stick out clearly in our dreams because I recall really checking out the components and was concerned about it only having one controller and whether or not it was worth the $18. I am not a stingy person so I wonder why I was in my dream?

After that I fast traveled again and ended up in a very large house with my immediate family who were all going to bed at a very early time. My mom was kind of harassing me about "staying up too late" but it was only about 10:30pm. Maybe I went back in time to a point where I was a kid in the dream because this was something that we would butt heads about a lot when I was in middle and high school.

In the end Mama stepped off me but I decided to go to bed anyway because the house was disturbingly quiet with me being the only one awake and I guess that is where I exited the Matrix and ended up back in my bedroom in Vietnam with the air con too high and sleeping in a position that really hurt my back.

Let's see what the experts have to say about this dream!

• Walking tells the dreamer about thought processes about trying to figure things out in a particular area in your life. Walking reflects your path or movement in your life where you might be unable to find familiar ground.

That seems like exactly the sort of thing a dream psychologist would say.

• Could this be a new project you are taking on? Perhaps this relates to your emotions in a relationship or past pain that needs to be understood within?

I'm not taking on any projects and I am not a very emotional person in relationships so nope, this isn't me.

It's interested to see what they have to say about your dreams over at dream dictionary so if you ever have a strange dream I encourage you to at least have a look. They have an entry for almost anything you can imagine. I think it is mostly a bunch of horsefeathers but it is still fun to read about it and maybe get an insight into what your brain is trying to tell you.