All posts filed under: My story

My Travel Bucket List – 3 Months In

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Follow my blog with Bloglovin Before I embarked upon this journey  wrote a little bucket list of things I wanted to see, do and experience. 3 months in, I thought I’d see how I’m doing, so here is my UPDATED bucket list… READ MY ORIGINAL TRAVEL BUCKET LIST 1. Get a massage Still a big fat no, the thought of an old Thai/Indian/Balinese woman crawling all over my naked body fills me with fear. Having now actually seen the famous Thai massage I can honestly say I will go to my grave without ever having one, gladly. FAIL 2. Have a holiday romance I guess I’ve had a little ‘romance’, I’ve had 4 Tinder dates, 2 non-Tinder dates, a few snogs, a few disappointing experiences, a dalliance in a hut… so I’m getting by. But no big romance… yet. WATCH THIS SPACE 3. See the Taj Mahal Yep, seen it. It was magical but obviously the one time I see it it had scaffolding on. FML. WIN 4. Not swim with dolphins Still haven’t and …

My Travel Bucket List

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Follow my blog with Bloglovin On the 5th of February 2016 (that’s pretty soon – eek) I’ll be heading out on the road for my round the world trip. I’ve spent a lot of time planning logistics, finances and other admin things like that, but I haven’t sat down and thought about what I want to get out of this trip. So I’ve reached down deep and come up with a bucket list of experiences I want from my travels… 1. Get a massage I have never had a massage (gasp), I know, shoot me! There are two reasons, one being I hate spending money on things I can’t see… like nice underwear, totally pointless to me. The other is, ewwwwww, stranger intimately caressing my naked body – I seriously don’t get enough action of that kind anyway, so my body isn’t used to it. My little sister LOVES massages, she’s obsessed, she even let a souk-keeper molest her in Marrakesh in exchange for a quick back rub (now that was funny) so they must …

Girl wearing matador hat

Don’t Tell Me to ‘Be Careful’…

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I’ve been planning my round-the-world trip for almost a year now, and without fail, the first thing anyone says to me when I tell them my plans is ‘Ooh, be careful’. Not ‘wow, that’s amazing’, ‘have fun’ or simply ‘why?’, always a warning about the dangers that await me out there in the big wide world. I have no proof but I could bet my bottom dollar that a male announcing a backpacking trip wouldn’t get the third degree. At first I wasn’t annoyed by all the negative ninnies but after the 100th time I just told the person expressing concern for my safety to f*ck off. It’s boring. It’s rude. It’s xenophobic actually. There are dangers everywhere, of course, but when someone tells me they’re going on holiday I don’t tell them that their plane could crash, they could get robbed or they could trip over, bang their head and die. If I did tell them that I’d be called many things, but definitely not caring. Though not the same, this faux-concern reminds me of …

So Why Do I Travel?

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As good a question as any, why do I travel? Perhaps a more insightful question might be ‘what are you running away from?’. Because I am. Running away that is. It was getting to a stage where I was long out of university and I’d been living independently in London for a few years and there was always the pressure of what to do next. I didn’t have, or want (still don’t) a boyfriend, I  certainly wasn’t ready to settle down. Although I had a good job and a nice sideline as a fashion blogger, complete with awards, I was pretty skint. It wasn’t that I didn’t earn enough money, it was that I lived in London which is cray expensive,  so the vast majority of my wage was immediately swallowed up by my huge rent. Mostly though, I found myself thinking, ‘these are the last days of my youth’. Dramatic, sure, but on a real – they totally are. So it was either plod into adulthood feeling totally unprepared and like I had unfinished …