Last night I realised I was carrying the whole world on my shoulder (just the left one, thanks for asking)… my handbag was weighing a TON! On closer inspection, my wallet was the heaviest item, heavier than my page-a-day-so-old-tech diary, all 152 pages or so. Now, before I get contacted by long-lost friends or neighbours I don’t actually know who have read the tags ‘heavy wallet’ and think I’m rich, the wealth revealed was a wealth of junk that needed to be tossed. The most impressive collection not classified as junk is photographed above – boarding passes, metro and museum tickets. Happy memories, and inspiration to plan some more travels. I hope I never lose the urge or the love to travel, and I thought I’d share why I love to travel with you all:-
- South African mobile phone networks are not good at fixing international roaming. So reason number 1 is: No reception. No office calls. No emails. I’ve never tried to complain too much to my network about that strangely…
- You decide how much money to take with you as forex, or as a credit-card limit. This gives us reason number 2: Living in a reality where you HAVE to spend all the money you have without a care. I always try to see if I can only have a couple of coins left by the time I catch my flight home. My record is one coin. I like living on the edge!
- I get tired of hearing the same things. When I travel, they’re in a different language. Even blah blah blah sounds romantic.
- Things smell nice. Even petrol fumes and fried takeout is masked by expensive perfume clouds. Foreign people seem to wear more perfume, or nicer perfume.
- Shops are along streets (mostly)! You don’t have to be closeted in a mall like a mole.
- Public transport is everywhere, and safe. One can drink and commute!
- It’s normal and accepted to walk until you get blisters on your feet, and stop all the time to take photos (with a real camera, not a mobile phone). Do that at home, and you’ll be locked up.
- Did I mention there is no mobile phone reception? No emails? No work calls?
- Even having lost luggage can be great (mine once went to London, while I went to Barcelona, must’ve been something I said). It was quite fun, (once I had stopped crying at the carousel which had been switched off 10 minutes ago, and then shouting at the lost baggage counter). I got to shop for new stuff, using someone else’s money!
- You get to have no schedule, you get to explore and you get to meet new people.
That’s why I love travel, now if you’ll excuse me, I better google some flights – ciao!
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