Choose Your Poison

There are two things that you shouldn’t linger on when planning a trip. First don’t spend too much time on the government travel advice website. It reads like the Daily Mail and will ensure that you only ever travel to the Spain to a five star hotel; where they only speak english and only serve cod and chips. The second is travel health advice. Honestly. This stuff makes for a depressing read. After I was done, I thought I was going to catch Ebola just from visiting Africa on Google maps.

Fortunately if you are a reasonable human being and understand that these are just risks. You should just mitigate the risks as much as possible by getting vaccines and taking the right precautions. I have an agreement with my travel nurse.  My job was to turn up on time. Her job was to stick me with as many thing as it took to ensure that I was suitably immune enough that I would be able to confidently lick any puddle in rural Asia and survive long enough to make it back to civilisation.

If you need travel advice stick to travellers forums. They’ll give you a much more rounded view on what to expect once you get there. Don’t bother reading the Daily Mail.GOV.

More to follow….

Choosing A Path.

"This wasn't something you decided in the last month or last year Tom. No, you made your decision long ago; when you first wonder what it would be like to a look upon an ancient ruin or gaze awe-struck at the sunrise over a mountain." I had a rather love hate relationship with the way Nadia always managed to put so elegantly, things that I failed to put into words. Despite my best impression of someone who wasn’t at all impressed with her gorgeous collage of adjectives. I smiled and thanked her.  She always knew what to say. Dammit.

There are currently two months to my predicted launch into the unknown. A trip starting in Asia I have been “planning” for the last three months. As procrastinators go I thought I was faring pretty well.  I’d so far managed to procure all manner of gadgets, but I had yet to work out the most important part. Where do I start? The problem, I decided was that I had the decision making skills of a puppy being released into a new home. In my thinly veiled defence I had come up with an ever-growing list of destinations that resembled no logical order. Perhaps I should just resign myself to the age-old technique of spinning a globe and stopping it with a single digit to determine a start point. Or better yet, throw a dart at a printed map. These are of course both terrible ideas. I’d decided long ago that I wouldn’t leave any big life choice to fate. I’m of the opinion that indecision left long enough is in the end a decision in itself. So it’s time to make a choice.