When you leave for Asia: Travel tips

Pre-Asia Travel tips

When you leave your home country to teach abroad, you will be excited to experience another country. You will be sad to go, nervous to start the job and anticipate the many bites of living in a tropical climate.

Before you leave you will experience random bouts of nausea, butterflies in your stomach, confusion and the sensation of running around in circles. When you depart your flat to love your random junk home, you will be overjoyed to be away from your reclusive housemate who leaves her hair in every plughole, but sorry to leave your home for the last 6 months/year/etc (delete as appropriate).

When you realise that you have one week left in the country and you still haven’t organised vaccinations, packed or bought insurance you will experience feelings of dizziness and recall your senses once three coffees and a glass of red wine have passed your lips. Then you will have more red wine, followed by cheese, in the knowledge that in six days, Stilton and Merlot will be either a very expensive trip to an ex-pat shop or a flight home. It’s o.k, the bikini you just bought to go away with still hasn’t arrived in the post so you don’t have to fit it in to it, yet…

Below are some tips to avoid this chaotic situation for a first time traveler. You can click on the links to go to some useful sites, and read some more of my stories. I am a fan of shameless self-promotion.

Travel Insurance

I once injured myself snowboarding in New Zealand and couldn’t work for a couple of weeks. Going to the doctor in any country other than your own can mean a re-mortgage so it’s worth taking this out. Had I not had insurance I would have had to pay for the hospital bills out of my travel savings, potentially cutting short the trip.

You want a plan that includes personal items, money and repatriation (god forbid) among others. A very good directory to use is the British Insurance Broker’s Association. They will help locate the right company for you to tailor any kind of insurance need you could ever want for some really good prices- highly recommended.

Vaccinations

Of course this all depends on where you are headed, how long for, how long ago you had any previous jabs done and how much you hate needles. They are however required pretty much anywhere bar Europe and your bog standard ones are Typhoid and Hep A. Some countries may also require proof of Yellow Fever before you can even get a visa so it’s best to check with the embassy for the country (s) of destination. You will need to book a travel consultation with the nurse at your surgery and bring any previous documentation (usually a little yellow booklet)- though you an usually get a print out of your vaccination history from your doctor. If you are from an EU country going to Europe make sure you have your E-hic card. If you have an incident on the slopes in France, the authorities will refuse to take you to hospital until you pay an expensive premium, unless you have the card.

Baggage

I mainly use a backpack because it’s easy to move about, you don’t create lots of noise heaving a roller suitcase behind you and you avoid looking like the average punter (although it does come attached with the backpacker stigma)- of course it’s up to you and whatever you are most comfortable with. Most camping shops on the high street will sell backpacks that will also be fitted and strapped on you to the right position. Or you can do what I did and buy it online for a bit cheaper. You will need to make sure you buy the right one for your height and they are generally tailored to male and female fit, which is really helpful.

Flights

I find it’s always handy to have one booked before you get to the airport. SkyScanner is a great site and has a very reliable app so you can book flights last minute from your phone or tablet. Nifty! This is particularly helpful when you want to buy a short haul flight in say Asia, and are not sure of local operators.

Visas

My first rule of thumb is: check with the embassy. You can always get advice from travel agents but I am personally skeptical about this and would never book with them- I was once booted out of Australia over an issue with my visa with a well-known high street travel agent. Some places will allow a stamp on arrival, some require prior organisation. If you are going to work abroad, is your company providing help obtaining the visa? Do you know how much it will cost to obtain? Have you handed over relevant documents? Do you have enough money in your bank to prove to the government you won’t be leaching? The answer to that last one is academic; mostly they just want to know that you will leave when your visa expires.

Bitty-bits

Did you get sunscreen? Do you have a waterproof? Do you have a sewing kit? A pare of shorts you don’t mind ruining in muddy treks? Have you got a store of ant-acids and diarrhoea tablets when you chance a salad from a street vendor? Do you have bite cream for your legs, which will inevitably take on the look of a lepers’?

At the Airport

If you’re a lucky person, a loved one may see you off. If not, hooray! You should congratulate yourself on dodging an emotional goodbye. If you ‘re with your best friend/boyfriend/sibling/imaginary friend you might be petrified and excited about what lies ahead, but remember…

"The only real stumbling block is fear of failing"... Julian Child 

Kaoh Kong, Cambodia, by Tuk-tuk and bike

Happy travels.

Lucy xxx

The night before Crimbo,

December: numinous 

Definition- description of an experience that makes you fearful yet fascinated, - the feeling of being overwhelmed and inspired. I think this definition says it all, and as it’s Christmas, please enjoy my version, or even ode to, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas or Account of a Visit from St.Nicholas', by Henry Livingston Jr. Pre-travel 'admin' tips will follow soon. Merry Christmas! 

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through Heathrow,

Not a flight was stirring, not even a check-in row;

The bags not yet packed, mulled wine out on tap,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there, 

to bring umbrella'd cocktails to drink, which we'd share.

The children were nestled all snug in their seats,

While visions of vaccinations and insurance, danced in their heads;

And mamma with her G&T, and I with another,

Had just settled down for a long winter’s night-cap,

When out on the runway, there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the waiting lounge to see the pilot for a natter.

Away to the sunshine I flew like a flash,

Tore open the free nuts and threw up the sass.

The moon on the breast of the new flying plane

Gave the lustre of mid-day to me in the air,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St.Nick.

More rapid than eagles the Sam-Song* would come,

And he whistled and shouted and warned me the same.

“Now, Dasher! Now Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! On Cupid! On, Donner and Blitzen!

Be wary of dancing on beaches sans shoes, 

You will gain many cuts and henceforth sore toes!

To the top of the palm trees! To the top of the world!

Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So up to the stratos-top the fliers we flew,

With the 747, the sleigh full of toys, and St.Nicholas too.

*Sam-Song is Thai rum. Cheap, sweet and guaranteed to result in double vision and in extreme cases, waking up on beaches totally sunburnt, in which case the drinker should then expect the dreaded existential hangover. 

London Underground and urban wildlife

An urban fox chills out at East Croydon train station

"When you get there, you'll forget about all of this,"

my friend Gareth states as we walk down Brick Lane. He’s trying to comfort me while I freak out, quite audibly, over the idea of leaving England again.

East London meets the banking district at Shoreditch, just round the corner from this Mecca to curry, a living ghost from the colonial era. Great graffiti murals decorate the grey brick streets. Shrouded in the dark blanket of cloud above our heads, the streetlights awaken in orange glow. The skyscrapers are blinking their scarlet winks early today, a clear warning to any wayfaring aeroplane.

I nod with trepidation. I am in a rut, a comfy cocoon where travel lies ahead waiting either as a chrysalis or Venus fly trap. It’s a rancid dark and misty day, the kind that induces romanticised images of cuddling in warm windows

He's right, of course he's right. How could anyone feel nervous about fleeing the cold for a tropical climate? Cumin and curry smells waft up my nose as we walk down the street and I consider this further over mouthfuls of greasy burger, purchased from the Diner in Spitalfields market. The Australian waitress, in the same position as Gareth and I have been on more than one occasion. Any jobs, anywhere, just not back home.

On my way home from work the next day, it is sleeting, so I navigate the rusty carcass of my bike on to a train. "Throw me a line", sings The Temper Trap in my ear. Later, a BBC show on urban wildlife tells me we need the urban foxes, who rely on our nightly gifts of leftovers, to connect to nature outside the urban sprawl.

Did you know that pigeons strut around with a gang mentality, befitting the Burroughs where they reside? I think that’s a fantastic piece of information. It says so much about pigeons and humans. Everybody and thing eventually adapts to city life. "Don’t go thinking you gotta be tough”, The Shins warble at me.

Through the weaving underground tunnels, we scuttle around like rats in sewers, trains snake in and out, over, through and slither under London, and you couldn’t get any where without them. You spend so much of your time in this city organising where to go- how much of it do you actually spend ‘there’ whenever you get ‘there’. Interaction is becoming a forgotten instinct and corporate Darwinism is taking over. No wonder people leave sausages out for a feral fox. 

Macaque eating mango at Monkey Cave, Krabi, Thailand

I walk around in the few open spaces on weekends and breathe in big-city-life fumes, peppered with the smells of Kingston Jamaica. Like so many inhabitants here I walk all over the place, but always rushing, always going somewhere, always to the tube. I don’t take buses enough, an under appreciated form of transport here. Do you know how nice it is to drive over the Thames at night? Big Ben ever present, twinkling a chime by the hour. How many times a day do most Londoners get to see that on their daily commute, I wonder?

Maybe we should all become tourists to our homes. Adapt like an urban fox and out wit the grey to bring back some greenery. Look around in awe the things you see all the time, you never know when your favourite bagel shop might be gone, or you gone from it. Stop being a headless business-man, don’t Mind the Gap, do give your chips to the homeless. Invite a fox to stare in your window. Those foxes are pretty cold and hungry.  I wonder if they have urban monkeys in Indonesia.

 Lyrics from ‘Trembling Hands’ by The Temper Trap and ‘Simple Song’ by The Shins

My favourite bagel shop is open 24 hours at the bottom of Brick Lane.

Countdown with Resfeber

October 2013

RESFEBER: From Swedish, the look of anxiety and excitement in one who is about to travel

Perfume River, Vietnam Lucy Munday 2012

I have finally finished procrastinating and booked a flight to leave England - in three month’s time.  My case of ‘Resfeber’ is intensifying as the countdown continues. The previous month’s realisation that I’ve got used to life here, mixes with the knowledge that I must carry on down the rabbit warren, creating a cocktail of appreciation for my current situation, fear of rocking the boat and a clingy desire to be a grown up - heaven forbid.

I know, what a first world problem. What do you do poor thing? Stay and live in an exciting city near to home, or travel to paradise? Well I tell you where the problem (if we can even call it that, maybe anxiety, misgivings or even just neurosis), I tell you where the misgivings come from - this symptom of ‘Resfeber’. I have got used to having a spice rack. And bed sheets, and drawers over living out of a bag. I have got used to being in the same time zone as friends and family. I have got used to having Branston pickle available in any supermarket for a fair price. Well, fairer than Australia.

These reasonings are fairly superficial and seemingly ridiculous ways to question why, how and when to spend a year in one of the most beautiful islands in the world. As it’s second time around, there should be more excitement than the first time. I know to some degree what awaits, and also how to deal with most logistical errors. I will meet many people, I will recognise the smell of the continent, the way the sunlight fades in to the horizon, the inspiring culture and sensory and tactile way of life there.

This is the big one. It’s a grander scale of travel than I have encountered before. Not only moving to one place far away, but a place where English isn’t the first language. Where I will stay for 12 months- the most sedentary I have been for over two years. Earning a wage far lower than what I am accustomed to. After so much upheaval, I’m testing myself with even more. I just have to ensure the reasons are right. First or second time, it doesn’t really feel like it’s happening until you’re on the plane. Even sitting on the plane, safety card in hand, is still quite surreal. When familiar with the sensation, does it not make it all the more or less intimidating?

…

Half way through the month I was sent to Scotland for work. How lovely, you think, and it was! London is an intoxicating great big bubble of a city, which to escape from is sometimes like taking in a big deep gulp of air after being underneath the surface of a busy swimming pool. Scotland is fresh, crisp and full of friendly people who walk at a normal speed. I enjoyed being away, and coming back, until I stepped off the train. The next few days were a concoction of being prodded with the inescapable annoyances of big city life that I could previously ignore. I gritted my teeth on public transport, huffed at queues and hated every person who barged in to me- apparently I’m so short I’m invisible.

Then I settled back in. I became a quick paced, barging, furrow-browed Londoner once more. I once had a friend from Germany come to stay with me, who described Londoners at rush hour as ‘all looking so stressed.’ I accepted once more the pace, and signs everywhere telling you to get a mortgage, contribute to the economy, just be happy with what you have and count your blessings. Of course there’s zero wrong with that, if it’s what you want. But I could be happy (because of experience) not adhering to the paradigm.

But as the days tick by I grow ever more attached to that paradigm. The ‘strike it hot-iron’ has grown a bit cool and the bull-shit fog encircles my head. It’s the fog that is inevitable in such a work driven city, where Friday night drinks rule and you wind up living for the weekend. My travel self- everyone has one- is the person in you that has a low bullshit capacity, who doesn’t buy package deals, or do what they’re supposed to, hates spending money on bed sheets and possibly questions the need to shower every day. My travel self is saying “You’ve changed.” My travel self resists walking as fast as everybody else in the crowd. My travel self prefers to gaze up at planes criss-crossing above the sky-scrapers. My London self (or England self?) is in a terrible rush, and does NOT speak to strangers. My London self wants to buy a coffee table and enjoy bottles of red wine with friends. So does my travel self. She just wants to do it somewhere else.

In the words of Mike Skinner, “Its the end of something I did not want to end…But something that was [possibly] not meant to be is done, And this is the start of what was.” *

Why I could possibly not be excited to leave for beautiful tropical Asia, is beyond me; how I could want to stay on in the soggy dark winter, when in the words of a good friend, ‘when you first got back to London you had this look on your face that just said, “what the fuck am I doing here?”.’ So after much neurotic over analysis, or deliberation, which seems to have no end as yet, I think I’ve found some answers. 

I’m happy. A happiness to be home that surprised me. There are worse reasons to be apprehensive. In fact there are far more valid reasons to be apprehensive, but there you have it. Life has moved me on to, rather shifting, new priorities, ideas and friends. I still want to be a travel writer, to travel the globe and experience as much of its’ variations as possible. At present however, returning to Asia feels like a visit in to something paused; some unfinished business with the hypnotic seedy underbelly and idyllic beautiful paradise of that continent. Am I doing the right thing, is a question I chew on over and over, like a rubbery old steak. I have to go back there to find out for sure. As the time slips by and my departure nears, I remember how tiring it can be to be constantly saying goodbye to people and I appease myself with the notion that nothing is final. The Resfeber symptoms subside and I reach for another cheese and pickle sandwich while I can.

* lyrics from ‘Empty Cans’ by The Streets, from the album ‘A Grand Don’t Come for Free’ 2004.
If there is anyone out there reading this in a similar situation and feeling similar emotions, I thank you for bearing with my falderal and I hope it proves helpful and maybe even a little comforting.

4 months until the move to Asia

September 2013 

What a lucky summer we've had! In England, summer is usually not so impressive, but this year the sun gods smiled down, for a full two months! Short to some but it counts for an entire summer here, if you count the buildup, more than occasional bouts of rain and drops in temperature. Just to remind you you're in England. And the access to English food has been lovely really. I imagine my homeland's comforts sound fairly vile to some other countries, but it's my home land and my home comforts. Some times that lack of access to them can be a bit wearing. Such as the times you're homesick and all you want is a cheese and pickle sandwich. or when its raining and you think, Mum's stew would go down well right now, oh.

But the time has come. To jauntily set off in to the sun shouting 'screw you bitches!' Actually that's not how it goes for me. Personally, I think the process is a little more involved than dramatically having an epiphany, packing one's bags and sticking your thumb out at the roadside. As much as the romanticised version appeals. It's far more, hmm don't think I should buy those shoes. Have I got insurance organised? Have do I tell my boss I'm leaving?

I've been waking from very lucid or just profound dreams. I'm positive I'm lost, in the wrong place and my eyes won't open. Instead of panicking I wonder around for a long time with pieces of paper in my hands, sure that I'll sort it all out, even though I can't read them. The paper is blank. Of course it makes you question if what you're headed to is the right thing. But then everyone tells you you have to go, you must do this, you'll regret it if you don't. And you remember these dreams from the last time you were imminently bound for new territory. 

I know this is the right thing. I know I'm going. I know I've got comfy at home, having a web of friends, family and fish and chips at my fingertips. In fact I've got so comfy I've got complacent. I'm sitting underneath a layer of thick green algae, in a great big lake, watching all the other tadpoles swim about merrily, avoiding fish that may gulp us down, and gazing up at the dragonflies buzzing above. I croak away silently about how much I don't understand businessmen. Despite the great surrounding buzz and shifting wider waters, no answers appear to swim before me in my own moribund little pond of stagnation. After realising I have become still, in one of the busiest cities in the world, (which beggars belief) I've reached another stage. Resentment. 

I don't like resenting things, places or especially people. It's unfair on others around you as well as yourself. It's even unfair on the natural beauty nearby that you're unable to appreciate. I needed to take another step. The visa is processing but that's not enough for me. After being advised not to book flights until the visa is through, and for totally justifiable financial reasons, I book a flight. One way to Thailand. 

I do have practicality on my side. As I've said before, I'm chasing my dreams and trying to make them come true. I quite like that lifestyle. I quite like the Asian lifestyle too, which is a rather nifty bonus when immigrating out there. There's also the fact that I rather neglectfully left all my passion, energy, enthusiasm, suffice to say my heart, back there. So I have to go back to pick it up. 

image: Sunrise over Nha Trang, Vietnam, October 2012 

copyright Lucy Munday

Dreaming of Asia

London, cusp of summer & Autumn 2013

Under a thunderous sky, my end of day commute aboard a strobe lit train, provided a tantalising stab of excitement. As I read an article on Thai islands, I remembered the deep calm I felt on that last journey. I don't know if you are familiar with extreme amounts of relaxation on an extended holiday; giving zero shits is what we all lack in our daily work lives. I really miss that.

Normally, when the days begin to shorten, leaves drop from the trees and chill mounts in the air, I can get a little sad for the end of summer. As well as envious for more sparkling blue seas and white powdery beaches. This Autumn a distinct lack of upset for summer's death was present. Sitting on that train I felt as if I was turning a key in a lock. An action I was about to take, a cog in a great big machine (the cogs in questions would be goals), that might possibly one day churn out a few dreams. 

Like most people I spent the majority of my childhood  day dreaming of sprouting wings, mainly so I could fly out of school. And like most people, for a very long time, I didn't act on them. Mainly because I wasn't at school any more. You've heard this story before. 

A little over two years ago I landed in Australia, fresh off the boat and seaweed still in my ears. It was all very sparkly, sunny, the air smelt of eucalyptus and burnt skin and I loved all these new and unique sensations so familiar to every backpacker. After a very long detour to New Zealand, allowing myself enough time to play in some snow and pretend I was a rather accident prone hobbit- well I am pretty short- I found my way back to Australia, where the real fun would begin. I worked on a farm, found my love of dogs, found my love of Australians deepen, found some long lost family, found some rad people to converse with on multiple occasions and did what most people living in, visiting and working in Australia do. Got drunk. Regularly. Until they gave me the boot, however not for drinking- I would like to make that clear! 

Getting thrown out of a country is a rather dramatic occasion. You do tend to questions where exactly you went wrong and spend most of this period with a nasty case of the 'what-ifs' and if-onlys'. As it happens, you shouldn't try to organise yourself too far in advance of these extended loner trips. That was where I slipped up. The second mistake was trusting a travel agent to deal with my visa. But, being made of elastic, I bounced back. I bounced so well I made it to another continent. Rather than slinking quietly home in a baffled and downcast stupor, to 'just keep going' was really the only option. Which means 'So then there was Asia'. And then there was Asia. 

I can say without a doubt I haven't spent one day since departing that locale, without dreaming of a return. Being free to act on any proactive tendency, I turned away from computers, 9-5 and a coffee habit, and for the second time, I chose reality over dreaming. To journey from a half memory to the vision of that hazy paradise where everybody acts as they would in utopia. 

You know when you wake up, and you can't quite remember what you were dreaming of. A few minutes pass or whole hours and you remember at the oddest of actions. Sometimes much later they come back as snippets of reality, as if a past event or déjà-vu...

(beginning with the months before travel.. .)??

11 December 2012 

I arrived back in England after 21 months of the other side of the world. That incident which keeps me from staying out much longer is just a hiccup, I keep telling myself. At least I got to see Asia as a trade off, and I promise myself I'll go back. To the smell of burning wood and spice, where tooting tuk tuk cabs honk their noses in your direction and the light seems more ephemeral. Where great sea green palms wave in the wind and bright blue seas show their innards. Where thickly clustered trees hide their creatures.