Top 5 reasons to travel

My first journey outside my fair and sometimes green, but mostly brown country was to the tropical paradise of Hawaii. Back then doing things in threes was my way of having fun. Swimming, riding and running around a large slice of the big island of Hawaii was so appealing I decided to return for three years in a row. The Hawaiian Ironman was like someone once explained.

“It’s like hitting your head up against a brick wall. It feels great when you finally stop.”

The race was memorable, but seeing the island literally grow with each lava flow was fascinating.

Most young Australians realise we are removed from the world. It’s a bit like living in a small country town, whilst all the action and excitement is in the big city. The big city for many of us is anywhere in the northern hemisphere. Mostly England, sometimes Europe and then perhaps Canada and the US.

When I first landed in Switzerland I realised language was going to be an issue. After some time I realised that letting go of your own language was hard to do. Learning German and then its Swiss derivative of Swiss-German and then more specifically Zurich-German was a process and something that I definitely never perfected. Un-learning English was the key. It was only when I stopped interpretation and accepted all things in German that I was able to bridge that great language divide. Dreaming in German meant that I was finally getting the hang of this slightly dispassionate language and its guttural Swiss version. I also learnt that with language comes a greater understanding of the culture. It takes time, but it was worth it.

After two years away from Australia I needed a visit to a country that spoke English. Why not England, I thought?

London is the place of fairy tales for Australians. That big clock, the bridge across that famous river, the palace with so many windows but nobody looking out of them, happy looking men in bear hats, the list goes on. I thought it would somehow be familiar. It wasn’t and it made me miss home even more. It all felt so foreign that I found myself sitting on a train, talking in Swiss with a friend, so that we could have a private conversation. I returned to Australia only a few months later and the first thing I recognised, even in the city of Sydney, was the smell of Eucalyptus.

I was on the back of a truck and a Burmese man standing beside me decided the hairs on my arm, which to me aren’t too significant, were worth pulling. He leaned across, gently grabbed them between his thumb and forefinger and tugged hard on one or two lonely hairs. Apparently my hairy arms were unusual. He didn’t have any, I did and I wasn’t sure whether he wanted them.

Later, in the city, after some hard walking I decided to take a massage. The girl took one look at my legs and said, “Ohh dear … monkey man”.

Say what? Oh yes, the hairs again. Next time I travel I must consider the great ordeal of waxing. Then again, I like my hairs, they make travelling interesting.

Who likes to be herded like cattle on and off aircraft? I don’t, but I tolerate it knowing that there’s not much I can do about it. I’ve sat on cramped buses where at the end of the journey I couldn’t feel my legs, tried to stand, fell over in the aisle and landed on a cage of chickens. They survived and my legs returned, but in the back I could hear a westerner complaining about the lack of space. I felt sorry for him. He was at least six foot five inches and the world according to Asia is barely over five feet. His tolerance, after a night on the bus had finally reached its limits.

Happy with my behaviour, besides my near case of ‘chickenocide’, I stepped off the bus. However, the very next day it was my turn. It was over a window. I wanted it open to breathe that thing called air, the gentleman behind preferred carbon dioxide (or one of those oxides). I yelled at him and told him that I thought I was right. He thought he was right too. We agreed to disagree, but I learnt that tolerance is relative and its limits are often only discovered when travelling.