Earlier this week I bought my ticket - I am finally out of here! I probably started seriously thinking about this trip about a year ago. After breaking up with my boyfriend in 2006, I moved into my own flat and lived alone for the first time ever. After a couple of months I realised how much I actually loved living alone and doing my own thing and so I started travelling to all the places I’d always wanted to go.
- I went to China on a trip with work, ate the most amazing food I’d ever tasted and was horrified by the toilets.
- I travelled to Iceland with my brother where we saw beautiful waterfalls, hiked to the top of mountains to look down on vast glaciers and sampled the famous Reykjavik pub crawl.
- I took a short trip to Copenhagen just before xmas with one of my friends and escaped from the commercialised mess that xmas in the uk has become to the gorgeous European christmas markets.
- I went to Thailand, visited my friend living in Bangkok and spent a glorious couple of weeks exploring Chiang Mai and wandering around tropical beaches. This trip was the turning point for me in that i realised that I actually could travel by myself without getting lost, lonely or kidnapped. And I loved it.
- I returned to one of my favourite countries - Norway, for a weekend break in the capital
- I fulfiled one of my long term ambitions by travelling to Havana, Cuba with my friends. I fell in love with Cuba more than I ever thought I would and would recommend it to anyone (as long as you stay well away from the tacky resorts).
- I introduced my mum to asia on a trip to Hong Kong where we watched the New Year fireworks over the famous skyline
- I went on a hen weekend to Budapest, reminding me again how beautiful the rest of Europe is compared to the UK.
The problem is, the more you travel, the more you realise that where you are right now isn’t so great. I’ve always been amazed that England is so different from the rest of Europe - a half hour plane ride and you get amazing culture, pavement cafes and restaurants open late at night so you can go out at 10pm and sit talking with your friends into the early hours. Here we have yob culture, teenage mothers screaming at their kids and house prices that force people into homelessness.
Of course I’m pointing out the bad points. There are lots of lovely things about the UK and I’m sure it is a great place for a holiday. However living here for the past 27 years I think comparing the cost of living to the quality of life you get just doesn’t add up.
I’ve wanted to work abroad for a long time. Scandanavian Europe was my first love, particularly Norway and I can still see myself ending up there some day but not right now. There are still so many other places I want to see. I’ve been in my current job for nearly 4 years and although I enjoy it and I couldn’t ask for better colleagues, it’s really time for something new. So after I’d returned from Thailand, a plan began to form in my head. Everyone I met there was on a trip of several months and I was on a 2 week holiday. It just wasn’t enough.
I decided I would leave my job in November of this year. This date was picked mainly because I had other commitments before then (a wedding, a trip to Japan that I’d already planned and a half marathon that I’d signed up for). Also I thought this would give me enough time to save up the money I needed to live on for a few months.
To maximise my savings I moved out of my little flat that I’d loved living in so much for a year and moved in with my brother. I thought about where I wanted to go once I left the UK. Canada was top of my list for a while - I fell in love with Vancouver when I visited several years ago and always wanted to work there. But for whatever reason, I soon decided on New Zealand instead. A working holiday visa was easily obtained and as I started to plan my trip, it morphed from flying straight to NZ to work, to travelling round NZ for a while before finding work, to travelling for as long as possible before I got to NZ. After all, when would I get another chance to do this? I’d decided to leave my job, was single and without a house or car to sell.
So my plan was formed. Originally I’d planned to start my trip in Tibet - a country I have wanted to visit forever. No sooner had I started planning itineraries around this, protests turned into violence in Lhasa and the borders have been closed to foreign visitors ever since. I am still devastated about this and hoping that things will return somewhat to normal after the olympic games in Beijing but only time will tell.
So my plan is as follows:
- Leave the UK in late October and join an intrepid group trip across India, into Nepal.
- Spend a week or so in Nepal, hopefully doing some hiking.
- Fly to Bangkok and hopefully meet up with a friend there for a few days.
- Spend a couple of months travelling round SE asia with a possible side trip to visit my friend in Beijing, if I can find a cheap enough flight.
- Fly to Bali for New Year (although I’m thinking I may end up having to put the date of this back a bit!)
- Fly to Cairns and travel down the east coast of Australia
- Fly from Sydney to Auckland, explore New Zealand for a while, depending on how much money I have left and find a job.
- I do not know how long I will be in New Zealand, although with any luck I will enjoy it, find a good job and extend my visa to 2 years; however I have the option of returning to the UK via the Cook Islands and the USA included in my ticket.
So that’s it! and this has been far too long for a first post. 119 days ’til I escape!
I’d really like to keep freelancing while I’m on the road and while this is probably possible in internet cafes, it would definitely be a lot easier to work from my own laptop. And then I discovered the Asus Eee PC. I first saw these in the airport on the way out to Japan and they were so tiny and light (and in a range of cute colours!), I was tempted to get one there and then. Of course the screen resolution is pretty low and they only come with a small amount of disk space but for around £200 and weighing less than 1kg, who cares?
