Ramble on (2, Chance)

The more time on the road the more I have come to realize the power and luck of Chance.  Everything on the road is left open for chance to come and stir things up.  Meet someone traveling the same direction, decide to skip a stop and follow them because they have a timetable.  Go for a walk and run across a group of Germans (and an Austrian) teaching in Northern Cambodia and get invited to join them for dinner.  In so many cases the sheer randomness and the results are almost unnerving.  Roaming the area and choosing Guest Houses from their signs, picking buses or taxis by the drivers facial expressions, all leads to one set of possible outcomes.
The last couple days the conversation was often about time travel (Pablo and his odd self-love time travel book found in a random restaurant).  Now I am thinking about what if I stayed in one place but could live out each of the different choices?  How much different would things be?  or overall would you end up with the same expereinces and simply different names on your Facebook page?  Knowing there is only one path I can take it makes me wonder about what is going into each decision I make (I have been reading a lot of decision theory lately).  Should I put in more effort to each choice? less and just go with it?
I know today I would not have met the Germans and not have been invited to dinner if I stayed at the first Guest house that I saw, but would have saved $2.  Who knows who I would have met instead.  I think I am spending too much time planning, as chance has taken me pretty far this trip.  Then again maybe chance+planning is the key to the wealth of positive experiences I have put together on this trip.  If only I had my time machine to go back and try the other paths as well, then again if I did that I would miss the path where I never had my time machine.