by Hannah Clarke
Perhaps the most well known travelling cliche tells us to behave as those around us do. So if you’ve got some free time to travel the world prepare to subvert from the mainstream and embrace a counter culture.
Save up for your big adventure by working your fingers to the bone stacking the shelves in Tesco or punching numbers in an underpaid office job. Find yourself a travel buddy who´s on the same page as you and head down to STA travel to cross the I´s and dot the T´s on your 9 month, 3 continent, 12 country, minute by minute travel schedule. One week before the off pack everything but the kitchen sink into your shiny new Eastpack and wait for your ship/plane to come in.
On arrival; hit the ground running, straight into the busy streets of Bangkok. Feeling like a couple of fish out of water, panic and get led to a crappy hotel that costs you an arm and a leg. Before long convince yourselves you´re going against the grain by volunteering in an orphanage and send numerous emails home tooting your own horn about the great work you´re doing and how fulfilled you feel. Abandon the orphans in 2 shakes of a lamb’s tail upon discovering cheap drugs to put in your pipe and smoke.
Within time start fighting like cats and dogs with your like minded travel buddy after one of you falls head over heels for the guy from your hostel born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Drunkenly air each others dirty laundry in the hostel bar, but when all is said and done, wipe the slate clean and move onto your next destination.
As the trip continues, realise that money doesn’t grow on trees and lay your cards on the table in an email to your parents requesting a loan.
Money worries aside, by now, home is where you lay your hat and you laugh in the face of touts and tickets sellers who offer you prices as if you were born yesterday. Fry your brain at a full moon party, (b)eat a dead horse in a restaurant filled with locals and find yourself somewhere along the way.
Before you know it the end is nigh, fill your bag with souveniers as useful as a lead balloon, cash in your ticket home and the rest, as they say, is history.
(One tip – Before you land make sure to give away the shirt off your back – a kaftan won’t fly in the U.K.)
