Very Venturous

Tag: inspiration

  • Traveling from Ireland to Thailand: 25 Hours in Oslo Airport

    Traveling from Ireland to Thailand: 25 Hours in Oslo Airport

    The satisfaction when you find a cheap flight to faraway lands is unparalleled. When you have not a penny to spare, the prospect of waiting 25 hours between connecting flights is absolutely not an issue. While I certainly no longer have this outlook, and will gladly pay an extra few hundred dollars to make my transit from one side of the world to the other a more bearable experience, before setting off on my adventure last year I scoured Skyscanner obsessively for the most affordable way to get to Thailand, and booked through Norwegian airlines.

    With a 25 hour stop-over in Oslo.

    This glitch seemed, however, to merely offer another opportunity to explore a new place, and I enthusiastically began searching what I could do in Oslo before my connecting flight to Bangkok. I hadn’t booked my flight to Chiang Mai yet, and left this particular detail to the last minute (as in, when I actually arrived in Bangkok airport). Basic logic and extensive experience since then has taught me well, and I now choose my flight plans with more discernment. Traveling for several days on several planes is extremely exhausting and unpleasant, and in the end the amount of money you would spend exploring the stop-over city (that you would probably never choose to visit otherwise) more than outweighs the amount of money you saved on the cheap flight choice in the first place.

    Traveling with a bike box the size of a mini van has added an eclectic mix of unexpected surprises to my adventures and plans, as far as to completely dictate them on several occasions. The first inconvenience arose in Oslo airport. I evidently was not destined to explore this city because as the stopover was so long, my luggage would not be passed on directly to the connecting flight, meaning I would have to collect everything in Oslo and recheck it before the flight to Bangkok – 25 hours later. Devastating news.

    I only had one rucksack with me (the same rucksack which had accompanied me on every childhood camping holiday in France – I always moaned about the inefficiency of a rucksack, the outfit you want is always bound to be at the very bottom of it) but the bike box more than compensated for any remaining weight allowance. I faced 25 hours in Oslo airport, sheltered by my cardboard contraption on the hard metal bench surface of airport seating (finding an armchair or comfortable seats in any airport is what fairytales are made of). I couldn’t even take a nap – short of tying my belongings to me, I risked being robbed of all my expensive equipment. Major distraction was required, provided in the form of The Girl On The Train. Extreme situations call for desperate measures, and buying a bestseller is always a desperate measure. So I set up camp as comfortably as possible (in front of a clock for some reason, so I could watch every painful hour ticking by), and flicked through chunks of the most boring writing I had ever purchased. I remember reaching the part about a baby drowning in a bath in a hut in the woods when I was on the plane – I’ll try not to turn this post into a book review, but let’s just say at that stage it was clear the plot was desperate to reach some sort of climax, and unsuccessfully decided to go for the ludicrous and unrealistic.

    25 hours later anyway, I already looked like a bedraggled backpacker returning from her travels across Asia and I hadn’t even left Europe yet. As I gleefully got rid of my enormous cardboard companion and headed through customs, I was very excited. Before boarding the flight to Bangkok, I settled down to a tupperware meal of rice and veggies I had packed. I was starving. Only to realise with enormous disappointment that my rice and veg were no longer edible and had turned to bitter slime overnight – such are the costs of not investing in airtight tupperware. I tried not to think too much about facing the eight hour flight ahead of me on an empty stomach, and munched on a few dates I had packed last minute. However this did not bring me much consolation as my retardedly dysfunctional digestive system can handle about 1.5 dates every 24 hours, unless I am okay with suffering the extremely disagreeable sensation of being attacked by sharp pins from the inside and leaving myself looking nine months pregnant. Which is, unfortunately, what happened, as on the plane I just couldn’t resist devouring the whole bag (I don’t think I was even hungry – or at least I was in too much pain to register any hunger signals) and spent the flight cursing myself and wishing I was back lying on that metal surface of the airport bench instead of squashed upright in the corner of an aeroplane. I also watched Hangover II, which was probably not the best choice as it provided an absolutely brutal representation of misadventures and possible death in the city which lay at the other end of my voyage.

    Something funny happened before boarding. I caught sight of a guy with a bike helmet on his head (which was weird, I mean, I understand the enthusiasm about the bike festival but come on, strap your helmet to your rucksack indoors please), wearing a t-shirt with “Carb the Fuck Up” or something printed on it. I had my helmet swinging from my rucksack handle. “You going to the festival?” “Yep.” “Where you from?” “USA.” Another girl joined in who was also on her way, munching on a veggie roll (I thought sadly of my deceased rice meal) and this was all just too cool, vegans traveling from all over to gather in one spot in Thailand (although I don’t think I spoke to these two people again throughout the trip).

    I booked and bought my flight to Chiang Mai at the airport in Bangkok – there are so many domestic flights around Thailand every day so there is no need to book in advance. I was starving at this stage so I went on the hunt (pushing my enormous bike box on a trolley) for some food, and ended up settling for some white rice and a salad – the oily vegetarian dishes were all a bit too much for me to cope with at that stage. I don’t really remember the flight to Chiang Mai at all actually, although the arrival is fresh and clear in my mind.

    It involved sun and heat.

  • Travel memories: Childhoods in France and Adventures in Asia

    Travel memories: Childhoods in France and Adventures in Asia

    My flights had been booked since Christmas: Dublin to Bangkok, at the end of May 2016. I had spent the past two years dreaming about going to the Thai Fruit Festival in Chiang Mai, a vegan cycling event organised and hosted by the Youtube-famous couple from Adelaide, Australia – Freelee the Banana Girl and Durian Rider.

    If this doesn’t sound like a colourful story full of interesting characters and concepts already, I don’t know what will.

    To outsiders of the vegan online world, this festival and the ideas behind it will certainly need some explaining. I have to remind myself that this part of the adventure is not something entirely within the immediate comprehension of my peers or the general public. Just a brief synopsis of the community and lifestyle in which I have dabbled over the past year provoke surprise reactions and curiosity. Cycling 500km a week, eating solely bananas for 30 days, living in a house with no lights, filming daily activities, not consuming an ounce of alcohol while in Asia – these aren’t the common narrative trails which usually populate a graduate’s travel diaries.

    The Fruit Festival in Chiang Mai was a free event created about 3 years ago and quickly attracted hundreds of people over a short amount of time (we have social media to thank for this). For a month, vegans from all over the world could come to Thailand to hang out, eat fruit and high carb buffet dinners together, cycle, run, travel, meet the locals, participate in Q&As held by Freelee and Durian Rider, and tackle Doi Suthep (a 10km steep mountainous climb) on the bike every morning. As the festival grew, so did the need for support services, leading many organizers to consider essential aspects like AV equipment rental for presentations and events. Additionally, video equipment rental became crucial for capturing the various activities and experiences shared during the festival. Consult with a Boston, MA bicycle accident attorney if you ever get injured by someone in one of your bike rides.

    This was extremely appealing mainly because let’s face it, vegans are a minority group, and spending time with and meeting like-minded people presents relief and great fun. Additionally, the event was facilitated by top-notch AV equipment hire, ensuring that presentations and interactions were as impactful and engaging as possible. If you are interested in renting audiovisual equipment for your event, you can click here. And if you’re hosting a big outdoor event, you can get outdoor lighting hire here. Visit sites like https://lightinghirecompany.co.uk/lighting-hire-for-weddings/ to get an idea.

    I’m writing today from the cafe ‘Picante,’ which is just beside ‘The Tin Pot Café.’ I’m in Melbourne now. When I had Picante’s coffee to take-away before (it’s good) I took a snoop through the interior, and quickly decided it was the nicest cafe I’d ever seen. Cafés in Melbourne resemble pockets of glorious hidden discoveries, as if they’ve jumped straight from The Secret Garden. To further beautify such stores, they can call upon services such as UPVC Shopfront.

    ‘Picante’ is a Pandora’s box – the coffee machine placed behind wooden framed windows, that may have been serviced by a window installation company, which open onto the pathway and wooden tables, in an unassuming poky room with French comic posters. Many cafes in Melbourne also enhance their appearance by using aluminium curtain walls, adding a sleek, modern touch to their exteriors. Continue down the narrow corridor and you enter a new room hidden from the front, with a fireplace and stack of wood, giving way to a courtyard which reminds me of the beer gardens in New York. There’s a chess set placed in the middle of a large table, and overhanging vines entwined on wires create a sparkling enclosure.

    I finished my last college exam in mid May 2016. My only exam actually, as the majority of my coursework consisted of essays and dissertations of diabolical lengths. I had absolutely no apprehensions at this time about my undergraduate education coming to an end. My aunt told me to watch out, that she had felt totally lost when she finished and really missed her college lifestyle when it was all over. “Oh no, I’m totally ready to leave,’’ I had confidently responded – I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life, right, I had planned a month in Thailand and then by the end of the year I would head off on the graduate visa with a nice job sorted for myself in the USA. I had absolutely zero notions of anything beyond this, and practicalities and logistics didn’t really figure in my worldly perspective. I couldn’t understand other students who had no plans after graduation – I had far too many. “I know exactly what I want to do.” Thankfully no one asked me to explain exactly what that was, because now I’m not so sure I would have had a well prepared answer, other than “I want to work for something I believe in which is in line with my core values and ethics and I will never work in hospitality again.” I had vague ideas about applying for jobs on indeed.ie in San Diego – about fifteen options had popped up after typing ‘journalism’ into the search bar, surely that was more than enough – loads! Also there was a magazine somewhere which hired interns, I’d be able apply for that too.

    I was definitely ready to leave Ireland, though. I had a job set up in the south of France on a campsite after my month of vegan galavanting in Chiang Mai. I’ve been going to France every summer for as long as I can remember. We’d pack the car boot to bursting point, and I remember my parents standing with their hands on their hips consulting each other anxiously about whether one side of the car was lower to the ground from the weight of the luggage (it definitely was). After the ferry to Roscoff, we would drive the length of France before searching for campsites (this took an obscene and cruel amount of hours during an age where portable electronic entertainment did not exist – and if it did, we didn’t have it, and it was just too bad if reading a book made you car sick). My little brother sat in the middle in a child’s car seat and would scream and cry for hours, refusing to let either myself or my sister lean on the side of the plastic contraption to aid an hour or two’s sleep.

    We always got lost, and after one particular screaming match between my parents (my Dad always refused to ask for directions, only consulted the map, and had very bad luck) we ended up parking the car in the dark in the middle of no where to sleep for the night, at least it had anti slip car park surfacing. When we woke the next day, we realised the car was perched quite precariously on a cliff edge, but the view was magnificent — we had discovered the Dordogne, and came back to this same spot every summer for over ten years. After several camping stints, one particularly horrific flooding experience prompted my parents to look into buying a house in the area. They did, and we acquired a second home. When I became ‘too old for family holidays’ I still came back and worked in campsites in the area. Last summer in 2016, however, I wanted guaranteed sun, and abandoned the unpredictable conditions of the Perigord Noir for a job on a campsite near St Tropez.

    I am now sitting outside The Age newspaper building headquarters, using the stone bench by the lawn as a desk, eating my beans and rice from a tupperware (I also brought a potato wrapped in cling film today, we’ll see how that goes) while struggling to keep my flowing hippie tie-dye dress which I bought in Bali from blowing up into my face with the wind. I eat my lunch in this spot most days, as it’s right beside the gym and outside Woolworths. I can pretend I work there at The Age, as a journalist (instead of at a smelly stressful restaurant), reflecting on the billboard headlines which flash above me, using the building’s wifi. Penguin headquarters are just around the corner, so I might as well be the editor there while I’m at it.

    A recent study showed that waitressing is more stressful than being a neuro-surgeon, and I’m not surprised.

  • 1 Year Travel Anniversary: Reflections

    1 Year Travel Anniversary: Reflections

    It’s been over a year. Since I packed two bags and left, on the little adventure I’d been waiting to jump into for years. I remember booking a flight from New York to Thailand while studying at Columbia in 2015, a stubborn and stupid decision as I was barely physically capable of making it from my dorm radiator to the university campus one block down the road. But I was determined to set off on my way to the Thai Fruit Festival in Chiang Mai where I would surely laugh about all previous health woes, while basking in a new-found appreciation of life and fitness.

    I didn’t make it to Thailand, and ended up having two surgeries later that year.

    But that’s another story.

    Interestingly enough, I wasn’t really interested or aware of travel as a concept at that time. All I cared about was hanging out with vegans and ridiculously athletic people, and having access to unlimited ripe fruit in a hot climate. When I flew back to Dublin, I felt immediately that I couldn’t stay in the country for the rest of that summer and searched a destination where I would be 100% guaranteed 45 degree heat and sun in August – Morocco.

    Someone asked me recently out of all the places in the world I had been to, where had been the most striking and memorable. Morocco was definitely where my passion for travel snapped into existence to the detriment of a cohesive future – I met people who had been traveling the world for months and years, hopping from country to country, having wild and magical adventures. The obsession with Skyscanner began. I remember finding a flight from Morocco to Spain for £11 and thinking that this was the most monumental possibilty, and enjoyed a stopover in Madrid on the way back to Ireland. When I arrived home I confidently announced to my parents that I wouldn’t be returning to college that year and requested they please put my tuition costs towards my world-travel itinerary (I truly believed I could span the globe for a year on 3500 euro – it would take personal experience to show me that this was a major underestimation). The answer was a resounding negative, so I patiently left my plans hanging until after I graduated. While in Texas, I explored various options to fund my travels, even considering Texas car title loans. If you’re planning a trip and need car rental services, consider looking for options like car rental Dubai airport for a convenient and enjoyable travel experience. Additionally, for comprehensive travel insurance, you might explore options such as The Sun insurance.

    During my Irish oral exam for the leaving cert I remember steadfastly assuring the examiner that I was going to ‘an baid ban a thogail’ out of Ireland as fast as I could once this secondary school lark was over. Even when I ended up at Trinity College, the place I swore I’d never attend, I couldn’t stay still and dropped out after first year to pursue my francophone yearnings in France (however, the French education system isn’t quite as lenient as Irish student life, which saw my swift return to Trinners).  If you prefer a more refined travel experience, you can click here for a private chauffeur services, offering seamless and personalized transportation.

    I’m currently typing away in a café called ‘The Tinpot Café,’ a rustic and cosy place with antique decor in Fitzroy North – Melbourne, Australia. I’ve been here for almost two months now (in Melbourne, not the café – although coffee shops are admittedly where I spend the majority of my time in this city). I am approaching the one year mark of being on the road. By ‘on the road’ I obviously don’t mean I’ve been trekking around the world and countryside daily, setting up camp every night (although it has almost reached that stage on many occasions). But I haven’t spent more than two to five months in one place in a very long time. And I’ve decided to start writing. Why?

    Firstly, it’s appropriate for the anniversary mood I find myself in these days – must do something to mark the occasion, right? A year is a standard measurement in these cases. Although a year does’t hold a lot of time anymore. When we were kids perhaps, one year would trench before us like a bottomless hole and you couldn’t fill a library with all the adventures, changes, thoughts and occasions which it contained. As we get older we find ourselves remarking with every passing 12 months how the past year has flitted by more quickly than any other. Now I’m going to attempt to fit it all into one blog.

    I’m going to start from the beginning and tell a story. This is primarily for myself (whether anyone reads it is irrelevant), something to occupy my coffee shop time, to refill the past year with perspective, a way to find what was lost along the way. We travel to find ourselves, have you heard that one before? Well, I lost myself. Completely. I lost my calm. This year has given me a new understanding of the concept of ‘comfort zones,’ and what it means to leave them – whether you choose to do so or realise you’ve done it unconsciously. You need to lose yourself before you can ‘find’ yourself.

    Ironic, isn’t it?

    Looking back and reliving the past year through photos, memories and videos makes me emotional, warm, frustrated – both proud and unsatisfied, grateful and regretful. The thing is, my problem isn’t that I need to stop caring about what other people think of me, but that I need to stop caring about what I think of me.

    I kept various journals and diaries when I was younger but the content always felt extremely false and flawed, uncommitted – not Anne Frank material. This project excites me, though. I feel as if there’s something lacking and missing, a part of myself I amn’t fulfilling, which nags and annoys me everyday because it won’t show its face, or tell me what to do, or how to do it. I could say that this is the aftermath of years of university and education, institutions and lifestyles which often ingrain a militant understanding of productivity and leave you scrambling desperately in their inevitable and violently abrupt end. “What are you doing with your life?” said no one in school or university ever. We spend our whole lives routed securely to an external structure which comfortably distracts us from any underlying internal questions and ideas which may present themselves along the way.

    Someone once told me that when I went to university, life would really begin. They were wrong. Your life begins when you hop off the tracks – a happy idiot full of expectations and plans. When I left for a month’s trip to Thailand in May 2016 I thought I knew it all. I kept going, and life began when I realised I didn’t have a clue how to live or what to do with myself – now that the whole world was mine I didn’t really know what I wanted at all, and slowly started to realise that doing what was right for me was actually a very complicated subject.

    Now I need to grab a second coffee and head to the gym before work. (Somebody just rolled into the café on roller-blades.)

    A very long story to come.