more stuff

Its been another hard old week.

With my sister coming back, it really dredged up all that desire to go travelling,
hearing her and her boyfriend talk about the amazing places, people and things they have seen made me go green with envy (not a good colour on me as Ive said before)

Me and JW had a number of big arguments after,
mainly about the frustration of being in my parents house, without our own space and privacy and hating work and want to just leave and go travelling

Its so difficult... because we made the decision to go to my parents so that we could even begin to think about having enough money travelling,
But it feels like we've been here forever,

And as cool as my parents are, JW still feels he cant completely relax (which I understand, but sometimes it frustrates and upsets me that he doesn't feel comfortable around my family)

Anyway we made up :)
And we agreed that we have to stick it out, and we had another good chat about the future.

stuff...

Im really struggling this week,
Work is shitty, and I really just want to leave now.
It's so hard waiting, I wish we could have JWs passport already, and enough money.

My sister comes back from travelling in South America next weekend,
so it got me thinking, what happens when you come back?
I think I'm kind of hoping that travelling will improve myu life, and make me happier- because I'm not happy in my situation now.

JW and I talked a lot last night about the future, and what we are doing after travelling,
we both agreed we wanted to spend some time in Cape Town, a few months or so,
and we both said that we dont want to come back and live in the UK- and we might try living somewhere in Europe, like Italy?

To be honest, I would be happy to keep travelling forever,
To just come home, save up some money and go again,

Travel interview with....ME!

Last three places visited
Cape Town
Budapest
Portugal
(and in the UK, bath and longleat!)

Next three places to visit
Woburn abbey (safari park!)
China /South Korea/ Japan
South East Asia

Favourite 5 places
1. Ipoh
2. Rome
3. Lisbon
4. Cape town
5. London

5 essential travel items
1. Swiss army knife
2. vaselene
3. pencil/ pen
4. sarong/ spring scarf
5. JW (!)

Favourite type of holiday
Lots of culture, nature and warm weather! With as little fellow tourists as possible.

5 places I'd like to visit in the next 5 years
1. USA
2. South America
3. India
4. Eygpt and Jordan
5. New Zealand

Where I wouldnt like to visit
Im not that bothered about Dubai (I have been stuck in the airport for 7 hours so maybe that counts already) The idea of loads of rich people in the middle of a brand spanking new city in the middle of the desert does not excite me.

Coldest place
Budapest was pretty damn cold, Ive never felt such icy wind- although luckily we had a lovely warm spa baths in our hotel to retreat to.

Hottest place
It's gotta be Sudan. My dad was living a cabin literally in the middle of the desert, and I remember one day the generator broke down, so the air con (An essential in the desert) turned off- Ive never been so hot in my life!

Best wildlife seen
South Africa was pretty amazing- Whales, baboons etc. But Sudan was pretty good, we saw a massive moniter lizard, lots of desert gerbals, many scarily massive insects and of course Camels!

Best food
Very hard one, but probably Morrocco.

Time for another map...

For no other reason than to make me feel better

Putting me on a downer

The other night I want out for a leaving do at work, and got chatting to this guy who has just started working there.
The conversation got onto how I'm going travelling, and his eyes lit up
he started ranting about how he is the 'expert' on travelling and he has been to every country in the world and how I can ask him for advice because he is the expert.
He asked me where I was going, and before I could get past china, he started ranting intensely

HIM: 'Oh, don't go to china, you'll hate it and you'll get bored. Do you know they don't speak English? if you dont speak the language you'll be fucked. Don't go there you wont be able to cope'
ME: 'Well, I'm planning on learning some of the basics, I think Ill cope!'
HIM: 'oh no, you don't understand they don't have clubs and bars you know'
ME: (laughing at this now) 'I'm not really going for that reason, I'm not going to get pissed every night!'

He continued on like this ranting for ages,
saying that 'hes just concerned that no one has told me the bad part, how i don't know how it will feel to be the only white person.
I explained (getting a bit annoyed by this point) that I had travelled and I'm not ignorant.
And he shot back 'where have you been travelling'
so I explained about my childhood, and how yes I had experienced culture shock, and how in Sudan in particular I knew how it felt to be the only white person in the room.
He shot back again 'no, no its not like Sudan, its fucked up you don't understand'

At this point I was just sick of his ranting so i said that he was so negative and he was putting me on a downer, and went to buy a drink.

The whole thing just really pissed me off.
And actually it didn't put me off travelling or going to china,

It actually made me worried about meeting people like him when we are travelling!

The kind of person who travels to get pissed in every country and spends all his time with fellow English people drinking lager and shagging the local whores.
The kind that when you meet in a hostel asks 'have you 'done' south America yet?' and tells anecdotes about how he was 'fucked up' and punched a tuk tuk driver in Vietnam.

Its the side of travelling that fills me with dread.
Ignorant English speakers drinking their way around the world, not giving two shits about the countries they are trampling through.