Voyage Of The Odd Essay

For the last couple of weeks I’ve ventured out of the UK for the first time, with my first passport obtained just a week or so before departing on the 12th and headed off to the Far East to join a group of friends who were traveling in and around Thailand.

I can’t really it call it traveling or backpacking as we only ended up going two places: Bangkok, and Ko Chang (Koh Chang) we did originally have plans to head further north into Kanchanaburi for the second week of our stay but by that time we had met so many people we were getting along with and a few different trips and parties were coming up that it made sense just to stick to where we were comfortable, particularly since everyone of my group had decided we were going to come back for several months at the end of the year and travel seriously, so there wasn’t any feeling of missing out on anything.

12th March – Manchester To Doha To Bangkok
We flew out with Qatar airways from Manchester which at the time was hit by sever gale force storms, so there was a question as to weather the flight might be delayed, or if we would even make it to the airport as they were closing motorways all over the place as high sided vehicles were blown over in a number of locations. Then with a quick change over in Doha we flew into Bangkok we arrived about 7am on the 13th (local time)

13th March – Khaosan Road, Bangkok
Thankfully it was fairly overcast and smoggy when we arrived so the heat wasn’t too intense, but all the same we were thankful to get onto the air conditioned bus that took us to Khaosan Road where after a bit of milling around we met up with our friend Kate who got us sorted out with rooms for the night at My House (On Soi Camasongkrum) so after settling in, having my first encounter with cold showers and a bit of a nap we set out into the day, had some food, mooched about and did a bit of shopping for the day before finally calling it a night late on ready to catch the early morning VIP bus to Ko Chang.

14th March – Khaosan Road, Bangkok to Lonely Beach, Ko Chang
This was our first real taste of travel in Thailand, which consists of starting at one location with a slip of paper of some sort, which as you go from vehicle to vehicle gets changed for other slips of paper as you travel along. The bus journey took perhaps six hours to get down to the pier near Trat, and then with a short wait we were transfered to the ferry, and then hopped onto a Taxi on Ko Chang which took us along to Lonely Beach, where a short (But hard) climb up the hill got us to the Oasis resort, one of the highest sets of guest huts in the area lead us to meet up with the rest of our friends, and the group of travelers they had hooked up with. After catching up and sorting out rooms and what was to become the usual pattern of lingering getting ready, eating, and then out to party we hit our first taste of the islands full flavor when we went to the Half Moon party at Siam Huts on Lonely Beach. Which was amazing night and really set the pace for our two weeks on the island.

I haven’t really had much new to write on this recently, while travel has never been far from my thoughts in some ways, I’ve also been trying not to think to much about it while I was trying (With difficulty) to get my passport application sorted out. However, yesterday when I got home it was finally sitting on the floor waiting for me when I stepped in the door.

So now I’m looking forward to my first ever step out of Great Britain, all the way around the world to Thailand in just 12 days time. I can not describe how stressful the days until my passport actually arrived were.  – Yes, I know booking flights to Thailand without a passport is not even remotely sensible, but it’s all resolved now and I don’t need to repeat such stupid paths.

It’s all a bit unreal at the moment, there is a group of us flying out to Thailand (Via Doha in Qatar), to meet a trio of friends who have been there for over two months, so we have very little in the way of planning, other then to meet up with them and follow their lead. All the while constantly hearing from them how amazing it is out there.

Given I normally plan everything with exacting detail, this is a very new way of traveling for me regardless of the additional distances, so I’m very much pushing my comfort zone.

With having friends out there already packing isn’t really a concern though, we have been given a whole lot of advice on what to bring, and what to leave behind, this weekend’s big job is to do a bit of shopping for essentials.

I have been pondering clothing, but I think I’ve settled mostly on the idea of buying stuff when I’m out there so I have some interesting things to wear when back home during the summer.

Lots of people make comments along the lines of “I’ll come with you!” when you talk about world trips, with varying degrees of sincerity of course, but either way there isn’t anything stopping people hooking up with me for parts of the journey. I’m not planning on having a full time travel partner since I want to be free to randomly go where ever I want without compromising.

On the other hand, the more people come out to join me for shorter periods of time – say a couple of weeks to a month – the better. It’s easy enough to plan to be at a particular airport to pick them up, and drop them back either there, or another location down the road.
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When anyone dreams of traveling by road I’m certain the only thing people think  driving is a VW Camper Van, they are after all iconic and capture that carefree spirit you tend to want from your dreams.

However, when it comes to seriously planning a round the world trip and making it a reality, a Volkswagen from the 70′s isn’t quiet as attractive when you actually have to deal with unmaintained roads, mountain passes and extreme weather conditions.
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Yesterday, I might have made light of the fact half of the Middle East and Africa is torn up by war, and when you’re just looking at a map and crossing of places you can’t travel it’s quiet easy to gloss over that fact, but actually it’s pretty depressing in a way and the countries that are off limits have some amazing sights that would be amazing to see.

Still, I can’t do anything about war zones, but the other problem – not been able to drive though Russia at more then 43 miles per hour, I have a solution for.
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Since I’ve started thinking about driving around the world, I’ve been spending a fair bit of time poking around at Google Maps toying with ideas about where to visit. The first thing that is immediately apparent is that visiting everywhere I’d like to isn’t practical in a single trip, for two differing reasons: Water and War.
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I really got hooked on the idea of been able to get online and work from anywhere I wanted which lead down the route of doing some research on satellite phone technology, and using it for data access. (more…)

On Tuesday 6th of November 2007, something in me flipped and any number of random dreams and plans for the future all came together in a spark of inspiration, I was going to drive around the world in a camper van called “The Odd Essay”.

This of course, is a crazy idea. But it’s not actually impossible. In fact, people do it all the time, world travel is easy these days, and not even that expensive in the grand scheme of things.

I do have a number of minor obstacles to over come, firstly, actually driving around the world is a little trick, since I don’t drive. Then, I need to find the vehicle that will take me around the world. I also don’t have a passport, so, I need to get one of those. And then I do actually need to fund my travels.

So I’ve set a date for my departure: Tuesday 6th January 2009.

That gives more then a year to get ready, and gives time to fit two warm up expeditions, Land’s End to John O’Groats sounds like a fun warm-up, perhaps in August so I can stop by the Edinburgh Fringe, and catch a couple of music festivals along the way. Then later in the year a trip around Europe really test the Odd Essay and prove that I can drive out of the country. Hopefully coinciding with when my little sister is doing a term studying in Finland so I can visit her.

There are any number of reasons why I want to set out and do this, and I’ll expand on them in later entries but for now the more I think about it the more I keep coming back to “why wouldn’t I?”