On this day 10 years ago, I returned from the travels of my gap year in S.E. Asia.
I booked a 40 day group trip with Intrepid that would take us from Bangkok in Thailand through Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos before finishing in Chiang Mai back in in northern Thailand. This was three separate trips that you could do as one. When the group trip finished I did a month’s solo travel through the rest of Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore before flying home. A recent check on the Intrepid website suggests that a similar trip to mine called the South East Asia Loop is still available going through the same countries lasting 30 days and starts and finishes in Bangkok.
I usually suffer from travel anxiety (the jitters as I call them) before I go on any sizeable trip which tends to start a week before I due to leave. The night before I flew out on my adventures I had some friends round, which was a nice distraction. But as usual, on the day I was completely fine. I was going away and there was nothing I could do about it. The mother took me to the airport and after a brief panic attack where I couldn’t find the right flight ticket and declaring my sharp wit with security I was good to go. With my video camera of less than 1 megapixel, the condoms the mother gave me and Georgiver, the teddy work gave me when i left, pack I was on the plane to go halfway round the world all on my own for the first time.
While in Bangkok before meeting the group, I was staying with some family friends, Mike and Margaret Stanley. They had informed me that when it came to leaving Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport make sure to use the official taxi rank station rather than anyone who would approach you with a price. It would be at least double that of a metered taxi. I was of course approached. The no nonsense lady at the taxi rank control took my destination and gave me a number until I was called. It took just over half an hour to get from the airport to where Mike and Margaret lived in the centre of Bangkok. They lived in a gated community just off one of the main roads so I was first met by the security guard at the gate who pointed me to one of the houses a stone’s throw from the gate. The second person I met was the cleaner because all ex-pats who live in places like this will have one. Margaret was the only one in, as it was a Monday Mike was at work. It was just after mid-day when I got to the house and I was tired, jet lagged and in need of a shower. All I wanted was a wash and a nap. Apparently from my own good Margaret only let me do one of these things. To cure me of my jet lag Margaret was going to keep me up until it was a normal bed time for the current time zone, not one a thousand miles away. First stop was lunch at a shopping mall. Something you need to know about shopping malls in Asia is that they all have an entire floor dedicated to food and providing it to the masses. The variety on offer was incredible and it was hard to know where to start. Satisfied that I had my fill I was taken for a walk and a trip on the sky train to see a little bit of the neighbourhood and finally for smoothie and a slice of cake at a fancy looking café that could have been plucked out of the western world before heading back to the house. Mike was home by the time we got there. After dinner and a chat, he took me down to the community’s health centre for a few laps of the pool before they eventually let me go to bed. I slept for a delightfully uninterrupted thirteen hours in an air-conditioned room with a king size bed. It was going to be a long time before I got to do that again. After breakfast Margaret called a taxi to take me to the hotel where I would be meeting the group for our trip later on that evening. After dropping my bags off I ventured out to survey my surroundings. Life is full of lessons you learn as you go along. Since this moment I have learned never to walk around with a map wide open sporting a facial expression of clear confusion. Combine that with my blinding white complexion, it was clear I was fresh off the boat. As a result, I was approached by many people with a range of intentions. I was surprised to learn that many of Bangkok’s tourist attractions were open for just one day a year and how “lucky” I was that that day was today! Every day is a school day but they needed to try a little better than that to teach me a lesson.
The whole group at Angkor.
There were fifteen of us at the meet and greet where we all introduced ourselves, filled out paperwork and gave our guide, Sambo Yun, the in-country portion of the trip fee. We went out for a group meal around the corner and then found a bar which was essentially one of those airline food trolleys and some plastic preschool tables and chairs on the road side. I apparently missed my first elephant when I went to use the loo in the fancy hotel across the road. As cool as it would have been to see my first elephant so early on we “Say no to street elephants”! The group left in dribs and drabs back to the hotel but the last of us went via one of those street food stands. The first full day of our grand tour, feeling slightly hungover and pretty sure I had some dodgy street chicken, was going to take us from Bangkok to Sian Reap in Cambodia. Just before we arrived at the boarder we stopped off at a Thai version of a service station which had an incredible deli style catering area. I wasn’t quite sure what I was buying as there were no English labels. Whatever I picked packed enough heat to put hell to shame. A blessing in disguise as it brought everything up that went down the previous night. After crossing one of the dodgiest land boarders in Asia where they stole the chain I used lock my unlockable bag with, we entered Cambodia and the dancing road. Aptly named because it was about three hours of being bounced around in the minibus seat. If I wasn’t sick before the boarder I defiantly would have been here. Rumour has it that Thai Airways gave the Cambodian government a cheeky backhander to slow down construction of this road so that more people would opt to fly and avoid experiencing this violation of the Geneva Convention.
The first night.
Cambodia operates mostly on the US dollar as you would require suitcases of its own currency to get your skinny almond milk organic flat white. Sian Reap is most famous for being the closest modern city to the ancient capital cities of Angkor. Spread over 400 square kilometres, this UNESCO World Heritage Site has hundreds of temples and would be impossible to see them all in the time we had available. We just saw the main stream ones, Angkor Wat (which features on the national flag), Angkor Thom, Bayon, Ta Prohm (the Tomb Raider temple), a couple smaller ones and finished with Pre Rup. Not sure how I felt about climbing up a 1000 year old temple to find people selling lukewarm beers and other trinkets. Needless to say, I got one and then dangled my feet over the edge of the temple, 35m off the ground, and watched the sunset with only about 50 other people. At dinner we were treated to traditional Khmer dancing and then we had a few drinks at the Red Piano Bar (apparently the favourite of Angelina while she was there filming Tomb Raider) and the Angkor Wat? Bar, a place where they let you write on the walls. Something of a theme in this part of the world.
Angkor Wat
Sihanoukville was the next destination and it wasn’t just the beach umbrellas that made this place shady. This was not a place to be walking around lone at night, which I definitely did, and the beach had gangs of kids that roamed the beach openly looking to rob people. We went off shore fishing with the most basic of equipment, touching each other’s feet while snorkelling to scare them, got sun burned and drank an industrial amount of green tiger beer because it was St Patrick’s Day. This place lacks any real ancient culture but if you are looking for just a few days on the beach this is best in Cambodia. Just make sure to leave all your valuables in the hotel room.
Krong Kampong Cham, a small little town with not much going on, had a hotel with enough room to swing several tigers in the corridor. We went on a bicycle tour across the Ko Paen bamboo bridge to an island that hosted a mostly Muslim community. While on the island we pasted several wedding parties, waved at lots of local children and visited a tobacco plantation where one of the workers over called us over to show us his dog that “died” in the heat and was going to be his dinner. Korean style BBQ maybe.
On the way to Phnom Penh we stayed a night at a homestay with a local family. Not sure what we did other than drink and play irresponsibly with fireworks but then we were off to the capital. Phnom Penh used to be part of a French colony, influencing its architecture and food making it a very interesting place to explore. This delightful collaboration cemented Cambodian gastronomy as my favourite in the region. I could write a separate blog dedicated to my love of Cambodian food. Like the rest of Cambodia Phnom Penh suffered massively at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian communist party ran by Pol Pot. Millions of people died either directly through war and execution or indirectly from famine from the Khmer Rouge’s regime which came to an end after five years when Vietnam invaded to remove them from power. We visited S21, a school that was converted into a prison used to torture its inmates. After this we went to see the killing fields where many of them ended up in mass graves. This was a part of history I knew nothing about until my visit. To lighten the mood we all visited an orphanage. We had gone shopping to buy various items to cook a meal for them. As the orphanage runs almost entirely on donations the children rarely get meat or fish in their diet because it is more expensive so many of the children look small for their age. I remember one of the kids to this day as he went to give one of the other guys a handshake and as a hand was offered to him he swiftly retracted his and punched this unsuspecting traveller in the crown jewels. We called him Tweetie Pie because he wore a denim vest featuring the Looney Toons character. A bunch of us went to a firing range on the Cambodian Special Forces base. We each paid $10 for 10 rounds on the magnum handgun, I paid another £50 for 40 rounds on an old school turn barrelled Russian machine gun that nearly dislocated my shoulder and one of the other guys paid $50 to throw a grenade in a pond. While we where here we heard the urban legend that for $200 you can shoot an RGP at a cow. Still not convinced that is true. We finished our time in Phnom Penh with a night out in one of the longest running clubs called the Heart of Darkness.
Ho Chi Minh City (previously Saigon but renamed after the leader of the independence movement from the French) was our first stop in Vietnam and I’m ashamed to say my first meal in Vietnam was a KFC. They gave me a plate and a knife and fork and had sauce bottles on the tables. I made up for this culture crime by having a chicken noodle soup from a covered market that I can only assume had been simmering non-stop for the last month. To this day I get Vietnam flashbacks every time I taste coriander. It was here we said goodbye to our Cambodian guide Sambo and met our new guide Tran. It won’t take you long to learn that when it comes to crossing a road in Vietnam there are no rules. You just need to commit and stay on the same trajectory and speed, let them avoid you and you will probably be fine. We went for a cyclo tour around town where I changed places with the driver for the last half of the trip, went to the war museum, boated around the Mekong Delta (which I highly recommend) and spent a day at the Chu Chi Tunnels that were used by the Viet Cong to fight the Americans. I was skinny back then and only just fit through some of them. They showcased the guerrilla warfare traps and techniques used, had their own firing range and gave us a taste of traditional rice wine, which was gross. They have a habit of putting snakes in these bottles of rice wine, not sure if our drinks came from such a bottle. Saigon hosted one of my favourite drinking sport during the trip which was another small stall by the side of the road just down from our hotel. They sell “33” beer over there in either a black can and a red can. On of them apparently gives you a cracking hangover and the other not so much but we could never work out which one did. After a few cans of one we would get paranoid and switch to the other. Never did we think to have one person drink one and someone else drink the other.
Can’t remember what we did in Nha Trang other than by a tee shirt, see an old temple stuck together with sticky rice, get sun burnt and go to a naturally heated mud bath. It might have been here where we celebrated one of the groups birthday by getting dressed up in traditional Vietnamese court cloths and had a dinner party.
Hoi An was paradise on earth and my favourite place in Vietnam. It was a beautiful town a short cycle from the beach, head a great fresh food market, lovely old streets filled with craftsmen and painters and loads of lantern stalls that looked amazing at night and would now defined Instagram bait. We had a tour of Yaly Tailors and saw the silkworm process to make silk, walked along the old Japanese bride, had our fortunes told and I bought a painting. Our hotel had a pool and there was a snooker hall on the way into town. Between Hoi An and Hue was an amazing costal road through the hills and clouds that no one could get bored of. Hue saw some of the most intense fighting during the Vietnam War that took its toll on many of the ancient building here. We took part in a moped tour of the area, had vegetarian lunch at a nunnery, struggled to make incense sticks and visited a second-generation Agent Orange victim who made the traditional conical hats which was amazing. She was incredible.
One sleeper train later and we were in Hanoi. From the central post office I sent a selection of items home, we saw the water puppet show, visited Ngoc Son Temple where an old man purposely walked across my toes because I was foreign, did another walking tour and then left for the world famous Ha Long Bay, another UNESCO World Heritage Site. We boated and kayaked around thousands of limestone columns, visited a cave famous for having a rock formation that looked a bit like a turtle, a monkey island for lunch and Cat Ba National Park on Cat Ba Island where we stayed a night A bunch of us chose to climb a fire observation tower which looked like it needed a good service in the middle of the park to try and get a better view through the mist. We returned to Hanoi where part two of the group trip finished. We said goodbye to four members of the group which included Michael, one of my favourites, and Tran. We were joined by two new travellers and a new guide who’s name escapes me but it was Laos for watermelon which if mispronounced means penis.
Our first stop in Laos was the capital, Vientiane. Second only to Singapore, Laos was the cleanest and expensive of the countries visited. This may be to fund the bomb disposal teams required to remove the landmines America dropped along its boarders to prevent the spread of communism. Referred to as America’s Secret War, it is considered to be the heaviest bombardment in history. We had another city tour by cyclo, visited an open market, a selection of temples and climbed the Patuxai, the Laos independence monument, to the observation deck. Next on the tourist trail was Vang Vieng, my favourite place on this trip and the adventure capital of S.E. Asia. This place is most famous for tubing (sitting in old truck inner tubes) down the river that runs through it and stopping off at all the bars the line the banks for a beverage or two or to use the rope swings from high river banks. Many have tried to ban this activity on H&S ground because of the number of drunk people drowning in the river or breaking legs when they swing into it when the water level is low. Most of our group participated in this traditional Vang Vieng activity while a select few of us went cave tubing with exposed car batteries on our laps attached to old miner’s head lamps and then kayaked down the river. That night we danced and drank at the best kind of outdoor traveller bar with lanterns, fairy lights, drinks buckets and banging tunes followed some of the heaviest rain and loudest thunder I’ve ever experienced.
Luang Prabang, a close second to my favourite place, is the second capital of Laos. We got here just in time for Pi Mai Lao or Laos New year to you and me. With a bit of a heads up we were prepared with our water guns. Mine had a backpack as an extra water supply. For two days the streets were filled with everyone in the area having a mass battle royale water fight or wiping painted hands on each other’s faces. One group driving through the centre took it to the extreme by trying to wheelie their pickup truck by bouncing on the back with old oil barrels filled with water. Only Chiang Mai in Thailand is meant to be better to experience this festival. Order returned to the city at night and we were treated to traditional song and dance at one of the beautiful temples and a fantastic night market. Just outside Luang Prabang is also where you can find the Sun and Moon Bear Sanctuary and the Kuang Si Waterfalls. The bears were a bit on the reclusive side but the waterfalls were hard to miss. This refreshing, cloudy mint coloured water was where all then families and cool kids went to cool off, so naturally we joined in. They formed large pools around the trees and looked like something out of science fiction.
From Luang Prabang we travelled by boat up the Mekong for two days staying the night in a village where they cut the electricity generators off at half nine at night until the following morning. We spent the days playing cards, taking photos, napping, chatting, swimming in the Mekong and briefly visited a cave temple with hundreds of Buddha statues inside. From Huay Xai we crossed the bridge back into Thailand and bused it down to Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai is Thailand’s northern capital, comprising of an old walled city in the middle and a more modern Chiang Mai around it. Featuring a selection of temples (one advertised a crystal Buddha which was just a silvery coloured one rather than gold), bars filled with ladyboys or old white men with young Thai girls on their arms, another great night market, day trips to hill tribes or elephants and the cheapest pad thai I found so far, Chiang Mai was a northern haven for all interests. While this was the official end of the group trip a few of us stayed on for another day to take part in a muay thai lesson, visit the world’s first dedicated elephant hospital and the elephant conservation centre next door. Apparently these two organisations didn’t get on which I found strange. It may be because the conservation centre let us ride the elephants and they do daily parades, shows and mahout courses for tourists. It’s a tricky situation. These are old forestry elephants removed from the illegal logging trade. They are domesticated and can’t be returned to the wild so if the mahouts can’t find work, they take their elephants into cities. And of course, we say no to city elephants.
The only time I felt home sick was the day the last member of the group trip, my other favourite James, left to head off to Koh Samui for his week-long muay thai boxing camp and I headed off to Pai, a small backwater village that was once part of the hippy trail, by myself. I don’t think staying in an empty hostel and living off nothing but oreos helped my cause. This moment self-pity only lasted a night and the next day I remembered I was In S.E. Asia and able to go wherever I wanted, do what I wanted, when I wanted. I returned to Chiang Mai for the night before heading off to Chiang Rai the following day. Chiang Rai was not as big as Chiang Mai or as busy but to me felt homelier and less frenetic. Not many tourists tend to visit this out the way gem but it’s worth a visit. I was the sole patron of the Hilltribe Museum, the put on a DVD just for me, and ate outside in a restaurant that overlooked the basketball courts where all the local kids were shooting hoops and practicing flatland BMX tricks.
A quick trip back to Chiang Mai and a sleeper train later and I returned to Bangkok. I returned to Mike and Margarete’s for a night but I can’t remember if it was before or after a stint down the Khao San Road. This place is traveller hub central of Bangkok, filled with hostels, bars and travel agents with a KFC at one end and a police station with massive riot vans at the other. I stayed in a hostel room that defined basic but that was fine by me as you don’t really spend much time in it anyway. You are either off seeing the sites or in a bar. The sites I chose were the Bangkok National Museum, The Grand Palace, Wat Phra Kaew and took a day trip to Kanchanaburi to see the Bridge over the River Kwai and the Tiger Temple. Looking back now I am slightly ashamed of having gone to the Tiger Temple but was young and naive with purely the thought of “I get to see and touch tigers!” going though my head. Little did I know at the time that these poor animals spent most of their “waking” time under sedation to make them docile and approachable, although accidents have been known to happen. I was finally put off this place when after been chaperoned round the first few tigers I wanted to leave Tiger Canyon but felt like I was being forced to sit down next to the other ones still there. One of the guides had my camera and I wanted it back so not annoying him would be the best way to achieve that goal. Probably the most genuine interaction I had with a tiger there was when a young cub that was being walked round the site on a chain lead decided to nap next to where I was sat. Surely, they hadn’t drug that one was well? There are other animals and temples to see while you are there but I would suggest avoiding the place all together. You can see other temples and those animal in a more ethical place. DON’T GO TO THE TIGER TEMPLE!
The Thai Islands were the next stop. Just a heads up for those heading there from Bangkok, you can either fly or take the cheaper overnight “VIP” bus. It’s basically a coach with a reclining seat and a couple communal pop down TV along the aisle blasting out local chart hits or and old school comedy film featuring the talents of someone like Will Ferrell for up to eight hours. Guess which one I chose. I hope you choose wisely. I was only on Koh Samui, the largest of the Eastern islands, for a couple of hours to find James from the group trip and then we moved on to Koh Pang Yang, the home of the Full Moon Party. We chose our time of arrival poorly as there was no full moon during our stay but there was a Black Moon Party and the weekly pool party hosted by the hostel we were staying at. The proximity of the pool to the room made stumbling back easy. Koh Pang Yang was the place I stayed the longest and it could have been so easy to have stayed longer. Every day had a similar routine. We would wake up late after a night on the buckets, moped down to one of the restaurants by the beach, eat yummy yummy food with a fruit smoothie, watch whatever film is on the telly in there and then maybe the one after with desert, sit on the beach with a drink or around our hostel’s pool until the evening activity started. While around our pool we meet a Canadian guy who was confused that his Californian girlfriend only wanted to sunbathe when she could do that at home, a Swiss guy and a Belgium guy travelling together (we kept making them ague about which country made the best chocolate) and a group of people who just finished university from where I call home. Played my first ever game of poker around the pool, came same second and won myself 100 Baht which was about £1.30. The morning after the Black Moon party, of which I have no idea how either of us got back, we found out either the Swiss or the Belgium guy didn’t. I can’t remember which one. So, with the other one on the back of our mopeds we went out to find him. Koh Pang Yang is littered with missing people posters, mostly about those who think it’s a good idea to go swimming in a vulnerably drunk state during these beach based parties and then get swept out by the tide, unable to fight the current. Luckily this was not the case here. He had passed out on the beach and we found him in a bar part way between the party beach and the hostel playing games of pool with the locals. At one point we went to see a Muay Thai event where massive Kiwi or Auzzie fighters took on small local amateurs. They weren’t fair fights and some of the locals were not in a good way at the end but it did get me into the gym for my second Muay Thai lesson of the trip. I’m a bit of a snowflake so training in a place where the mercury is touching 40 degrees was nearly enough to knock me out, let alone my sparing partner. All good things had to come to an end and it was time for us to move on, and like the last time James left first, leaving me for another day in paradise. My friend Lucy from home was coming out to Thailand to do some conservation work and the plan was to hopefully meet up with her. The logistics of trying to get to the village in the middle of nowhere where she was would be difficult so sadly we decided to scrap the idea and just see each other at home. On to Malaysia then.
On the odd occasion when travelling we all make a mistake make you angry and hate yourself for being such an idiot at the time but usually results in a life lesson that stays with you. At the Thai boarder the bus company took me to a money exchange so I could go into Malaysia with some ringgit, the Malay currency. I was just going to get some when I got there but they insisted. The bank had blocked my card because I had been away for longer than 6 weeks by this point so I had to call them from the money changer to allow me to use it again then I was eventually able to withdraw some money to get it changed. I was tired and the exchange staff were throwing lots of different numbers of different currency exchange rates at me in an effort to confuse me. It worked. It was only later on that I crunched the numbers myself and worked out they had got an extra £40 out of me. Enough to have cover accommodation and meals for that next week in Malaysia. Was £40 worth that life lesson? The tuition fee for the university of life? I would say yes. I’m never going to make that mistake again and I hope that phone call back home cost them a fortune!
I started the Malaysian leg in George Town, Penang and it was a breath of fresh air. Malaysia is predominantly Muslim with a Muslim government and a strong colonial history. The place felt different and I liked it. Along with the colonial buildings there was a big Chinese influence in the architecture and food, which was amazing. I visited Fort Cornwallis and had a tour from a local guide who looked old enough to have been there when it was originally built during the peak of colonial rule and the East India Trading Company. From George Town I wanted to head towards the Cameron Highlands to walk around the hills and drink copious amounts of tea straight from the bush. Sadly, the buses weren’t running there because of a lack of interest so I had to miss out on this destination. A good excuse to return I think. It was off to the capital.
On the bus trip to Kuala Lumpur I got talking to an old American guy who spent most the journey talking about the numerous times he had been to Malaysia and making fun of a Canadian on the bus wearing a “stupid” hat who was travelling with his Malaysian girlfriend. He asked me where I was staying, Hostel Red Dragon, and approved. It was very central, was right next to the bus terminal, it had lots of people there, a TV lounge and large windows on the first floor you could walk out of and dangle your legs over the street below. Current reviews suggest the place has gone to the toilet. KL is an easy place to walk round if you have the time as some attractions are quite spread out. One thing to be aware of in Malaysia is that gambling is illegal. Luckily, I heard about this scam prior to leaving on my trip. You will be approached by someone who will ask something simple like what the time is to break the ice and then ask you where you are from. Coincidentally they will have a relative who will be moving there! You could say Mordor from Lord of the Rings and they will still say they are going there. They will ask you to sit down, they might even buy you a drink, and they will ask you about where you are from and what its like. They will eventually ask you if you would go back to their place and talk to this mystery relative about the wonderful country you are from. When you are there they will get the drinks out and the pack of cards to play some games. The money will then come out and as soon as you start to gamble they will threaten to call the police on you unless you pay them off. There are some genuinely nice people but look out for the warning signs! When I wasn’t being approached by this con artist I visited the Space Museum, the Bird Park, the Butterfly Park, the National Mosque of Malaysia, Merdeka Square, Kuala Lumpur Tower, KLCC Park, a deer park and the shopping mall underneath the Petronas Towers. The last one was mostly for a bit of air-con.
Malacca was my last destination in Malaysia. Not really sure why I went there but it was alright. Saw enough museums to keep me tied over for the next decade. I visited the Maritime Museum, Royal Malaysian Naval Museum, Malaysia Architecture Museum, Malaysia Youth Museum, Malaka Literature Museum, Governor’s Museum probably along with others and more normal sites such as A Famosa, St. Paul’s Church, Christ Church, Stadthuys and the Taming Sari Tower. There was an abundance of really nice colonial buildings to walk around but the best bit was the Newton Food Hall. So much food.
The final destination of the trip was Singapore. This was the first time back to Singapore since we left as a family, twelve years earlier, after six years of living there. I was six when we left and remember very little of it so it was nice to have a tour of my old stomping ground. I was going to be staying with Roger and Asha, some more family friends back from a time when I lived there, back in the complex where I used to live, The Estoril. Sadly, now been sold to developers, probably to be demolished and a taller structure put in its place. Space is limited in Singapore so up is the best direction to go. I extended my flight by a few days because I wasn’t ready to go home, a prospect that was looming very quickly. With that extra time, I went to visit my old school which looked much smaller than I remember, the iconic Merlion, the Singapore Cricket Club, The Raffles Hotel, the Botanical Gardens and went to the world-famous Singapore Zoo with the maid and nanny I had when we lived there. This makes me sound posh but again it was something that most expat families living in Singapore had. We still send each other Christmas cards. Singapore has a reputation for being a bit stuffy and boring, and to some extent this is true. My parents have described it as “Hong Kong with the fun taken out”. You can be arrested or fined for a number of interesting reasons such as: jay-walking, walking around your own home in the nude with the curtains open, selling chewing gum, flying kites that interfere with public traffic, feeding pigeons and annoying someone with a musical instrument to name a few. How they expect to have any future musicians is beyond me if they can’t practice. Urinating in an elevator was another but though that was just common sense and didn’t need to be singled out. Should you be caught in the act of any of these atrocities there is a place you can buy a t-shirt with your offence strewn across the front.
It was only during the flight back I realised that I could have postponed my return a little bit longer again and headed over to Malay Borneo or Jakarta in Indonesia for a week or so. The curse of hindsight. But as with many sites, opportunities and experiences I missed along the way, it is always a good excuse to go back.
Ten years on and do I think a gap year is worthwhile? Do I think my gap year was worthwhile? Would I do it again? Yes to all. Apart from heading to university with a few cool stories and photos for the Facebook profile picture which is what matters when you are nineteen, it made me more confident, more self-reliant, smarter and probably a little more interesting, not to sound cliché. While I am yet to reach God level in any of those categories it was definitely an improvement on the version of me that left for the trip. If I could have changed anything about the whole experience I would have worked more hours in the shop leading up to my travels. I came back with some money still in the bank which is what I intended but I could have spent more time away, seen another country like Myanmar, had that pudding after dinner, visited that hill tribe or that “just in case” if anything went wrong if I had more bank padding. I didn’t “find myself” while I was out there, I didn’t come back wearing hemp, eating a vegan diet, enlightened to the plight of sea cucumbers or protesting outside parliament for the rights of temple monkeys to be recognised by the UN. That’s not what the mission of the trip was. It was for me to explore parts of the world previously unseen, meet some new people, to experience independent travel, to get away from the parents, hopefully learn a thing or two about the places I’d been and maybe have a foreign fling. I ticked most the boxes.
