I had been living on Koh Samui in Thailand for almost half a year and it had been exciting and fun. I was sharing a house with Laurent, a french frogman, opposite Big Buddha Pier in Ban Bang Rak and we had a ball there. Diving by day, watching the sunset by dusk and going dancing, meeting friends for dinner or having a party or a barbeque by night. Life was easy, chilled out and great fun. Nevertheless, I felt ready to leave, go some place else, move on. Six months in one place was a long time for me then. Most of us left Samui around the same time. Continue reading
Category Archives: Articles
Why I Travel
When I was little my family always went travelling. Most of my school friends went for two weeks to Italy, France or Greece during the summer holidays. My family rather chose to spend all of our school holidays away in Poland, Hungary or the Baltics, which was a lot cheaper as well. Continue reading
Endurance Training
One of the most important traits one can have as a traveller is endurance. After all we spend a considerable amount of our travelling life waiting. We wait for a bus, that was supposed to have picked us up three hours ago; we wait at airports to catch our flight out; we wait in a queue at some embassy to apply for a visa and then again to pick it up; we wait at restaurants for our food to arrive; we wait for our next trip to start; we wait at border crossings for a border guard to stamp our passport; we wait and pray for daylight to arrive, cause we, once again, chose the cheapest guesthouse, which is full of bugs and mosquitos and lacks a basic mosquito net; we wait at customs while our backpack is being inspected; we wait…The list goes on and on. Continue reading
What Type Of Traveller Are You?
I love to watch people. I do it at home, sitting in a café for example, and I do it while travelling. I found Khao San Road in Bangkok, Thailand, to be one of the best places to indulge in my hobby. You just sit down in a restaurant with a chilled beer and watch the world pass by. There’s Israelis with dreadlocks and wearing bandanas, English burnt by too much time in the sun and too little sunscreen, Swedes, tanned a dark brown in their boardshorts and cultivating that surfers look, German tourists trying to blend in to the whole traveller scene and in between them all left over hippies on a short visit from the last full moon party in Goa. Nowadays, you can actually interchange all those nationalities. The country-cliches are slowly disolving I think, but there are still different types of travellers: Continue reading
A Little Something About Sharks
A few days ago I met an old acquaintance of mine. We hadn’t seen each other in years, so naturally we chatted about what happened to us during those years. Eventually we got to me teaching diving in Southeast Asia. This always seems to fascinate people and one of the first questions is usually if I’ve seen any sharks. After more than a thousand dives the answer is obviously a yes, with a huge grin on my face. I love sharks, I think they are great animals and it shows. My old friend didn’t understand me. After all, sharks don’t have the cuddly appearance of dolphins and judging from their reputation with the public, they are more like the mass murderers of the ocean. Continue reading
A Beginner’s Guide to Travelling
I usually start the planning for a trip ages before I actually go away. I work as much as I can and save as much money up as I can, so the planning part is the only thing that keeps me sane. I work a bit over 300 hours in 2 jobs and this probably for over 6 months. But I know all this work will have an end eventually and my goal (going travelling) is keeping me motivated. So I have a lot of time on my hands in which I can think about what to take with me, where to go first, what to do, who to meet up with, and so on. Continue reading