Thursday 27 September 2012

Where To Next?

I'M NOT going to lie to you - I've had a good run when it comes to travel.

Really good. Since 2005 I've been lucky enough to explore parts of Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, United States of America, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, France, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Monaco, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Poland, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, Greece, Italy, San Marino and the Vatican City. Add to that overnight stop-overs in South Korea and Japan as well as a few pass-throughs of Slovakia, and yeah, I'm doing ok.

It's not enough.

There's still so much of the world to explore you see. Note the complete lack of South American countries in the above list - have to fix that. Two weeks in South Africa wasn't nearly enough: didn't even go to a game park or anything! Definitely need to fix that one up - and I hear places like Mozambique and Namibia are pretty awesome as well. Come to think of it, how awesome would a Cape to Cairo be? Of course, once you're in Cairo the Middle East is right next door, and frankly it'd be rude not to go (riots, civil disturbances and possible wars notwithstanding).
It's amazing too how many people have rabbited on about their Asian experiences. Imagine overlanding in Singapore and slowly exploring South-East Asia all the way up to China, Japan, South Korea - hell wouldn't North Korea be an experience come to that? And I hear Myanmar/Burma's starting to open up as well...

You see my problem? And that's without the inevitable re-visiting places like the USA and Canada to visit friends and new attractions (hello Rockies and Grand Canyon!). Not being blessed with James Packer's bank account (or even one that, you know, averages more than two digits before the decimal point) means that if I'm going to tick these boxes I'm going to have to either:

  1. get a job that pays better than a hostel; or 
  2. get a job that takes me places. 
Number 1 would be a lot easier had General Newman not decided to sack 14,000-odd public servants since coming to power. I'd love to get back into writing or radio, but the seven years since I last worked in the media seems to be an issue for potential employers.
Which leaves us with number 2. Tour guide again, or maybe teaching English overseas? I hear there's some good coin to be had there....

At any rate, I'm going to have to come up with something soon. The world's a big place, and that travel itch needs scratching NOW.