Wanderlust

I finished Peter Moore’s The Wrong Way Home (he is really hilarious) over the weekend, in which Moore documented his experience travelling overland solo from London to Sydney. His trip took place in 1994 and yes, he travelled through the war-torn Balkan countries.

I’ve also very recently been following a blog of a young couple on their round-the-world (RTW) trip. Man, how I would love to do that, taking a year out and just travel from one country to another. In fact, the couple I met at Halong Bay were on their RTW trip. On first thought, it’s not very feasible for me because:

- I would need to save for years for the trip (I don’t understand why millionaires or billionaires don't go on RTW trips. Or do they?)
- I don’t think I can afford to take unpaid leave for a year. Even if the house is left occupied, there are still bills to pay to keep the house in order (quit rent, assessment rent, and utility bills if you don’t want to be cut off, etc, etc)
- And even if I can afford to go on an unpaid sabbatical, will my boss allow me? Plus it may not be a wise thing to do (going on sabbatical) under the current economic conditions
- I don’t think I can travel alone for a year. I can do a solo trip for a fortnight, three weeks, a month maybe. But for a year??
- Hence, I need a companion. Someone who can stand me, someone who can look out for me, who can put up with my emo yoyo and tantrums and fuss. Someone who also shares the same wanderlust and is able to also take a sabbatical. Hmmm...

And of course there are other considerations including but not limited to the following:

1) Food/Daily diet
This is an important consideration to me because I’m a fussy eater. Let me put it on record that bread is not on my favourite food list. The only bread I liked to eat was the homemade bread that Mummy used to make when we were small. Five years of bread for four days a week at boarding school definitely did not made me like bread any better (and we were served eggs too. Ugh!): that’s 2.5 years of eating bread, people. I can still eat buns but after a fortnight of a diet of buns and bread, it will be some time before I can start liking eating buns again. In fact, the very thought of buns is making me ill already.

I don’t really like kebabs either (they are so unhealthy!) but unfortunately I don’t have much choice when in Europe because this is among the few halal fare available. Seafood is not available everywhere and it’s usually more expensive even at seaside cities. Besides, I can never eat kebabs gracefully enough. Some meat, salad or sauce will be dripping down or smearing my cheeks and at the end, half of the kebab will inevitably be on the plate. Oh how I was craving for fish and chips and wishing for jacket potatoes on my recent trip! (I saw jacket potatoes on the menus of some restaurants in Malta but was in a hurry then. And fish and chips cost so much in places supposedly to be blessed with abundant seafood like Malta, Cyprus and Croatia).

Liking to eat bread, eggs and kebabs would certainly make travelling easier in my case. Unfortunately, they are the very food that I don’t like. But strangely enough, I didn’t miss eating rice at all in Europe. I can happily survive not eating rice for one month. OK, I know that’s nothing compared to some people who have actually stopped eating rice altogether (but still a big deal for the average Asian).

2) Sleeping arrangement
I have slept in airports (OK, tried to), on trains, heck, even outside a train station once before. (I don’t like trying to sleep in airports though because I can never sleep in bright, noisy places). I don’t mind sleeping rough once in a while as long as it’s once in a while. I’d like to sleep on a bed more often than roughing it up.

On a RTW, I need to keep booking for accommodation. Not impossible but can be troublesome. And what if I cannot get a place to stay for any particular night/stretch of nights? I don’t want to end up ‘homeless’. Been there, done that, thank you very much.

3) Other considerations
I’m not too keen on living out of suitcases (or rucksack) for extended periods of time. I also get worried over silly things like having a fresh set of laundered clothes to wear every day, laundering clothes and ensuring that they dry before my next journey etc, etc. I already worry enough about when and where I can perform my prayers while on the move as it is. Then there are other considerations like being kept up-to-date on family matters, world affairs, footie scores, TV programmes, etc, etc. And how long will it before I get tired and exhausted just dragging my suitcase around (no, I don’t want to carry a backpack on me again), of constantly having to keep an eye on my things, of always being alert of my surroundings... just to mention a few.

So bearing the above in mind, I guess I’ll have to make do with taking tiny baby steps and slowly expanding my wings. Sure all these different trips will add up and cost me more in the long run than one single long trip but to do it in one shot, I don’t know. It sounds overwhelming. Besides, what else is there to do once you’ve completed your RTW? I’m not one to go from one adventure to another like finish RTW, strike it off my list of to-do things, then try to scale mountains, then dive into deep oceans before attempting sky-diving etc.

But, God, how I would actually love to do a RTW if given the opportunity and the money...! I so want to go to Africa; to sleep in a tent somewhere along the Silk Road; to explore the ruins in Turkey and Syria, to name just two; to visit the ex-Soviet countries; to lose myself in South America (in fact I’ve already drawn a rough schedule for South America – if I ever get there); etc, etc.

To do it all in style, I’m now off to find a Greek tycoon...