What Not To Do On Your Gap Year

Often people expect wild and crazy times from an essentially clichéd travel destination. From my adventures I have learnt one thing – if you’ve seen it on TV then it is basically bound to be tame. A night out in Amsterdam – tame. Tame as hell. New Years Eve in NYC (or in Sydney for that matter) – again, tame. Even slightly boring. Skiing in Queenstown – tame, tame, and tame. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being a snob (well maybe just a little) but those things you’ve dreamed about doing for years are probably going to fall short of your expectations when you actually do them. If you want my advice the best, most memorable and life-changing experiences I have had when overseas have happened when I’ve been taking a huge, unpredictable risk. What follows are tales from my gap year – the worst, scariest (but also my favourite!) travel experiences.

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Permalink SEVILLE, SPAIN Seville is not Paris. After fighting with my two high school friends because I saw one “looking at me weird” I decided it was time to cut the bond, and I started out again on my own. I had been studying Spanish for a while (i.e. I had a pocket dictionary and a huge teenage ego) so I walked up to the man in the ticket booth saying: “Excuse me kind sir, would you be ever so helpful as to allow me to purchase a ticket to Paris?” Not understanding my fluency, he said “Que?” to which I said “Uh… Paris? Paree?” Still nothing. “Seville?” “Si!” I replied. I thought 16hrs might be a bit of a long journey to travel only 900kms but hey, when in Rome. Needless to say I woke at the Portuguese border with barely $20 to my name so I took the productive move of crying in the train station for an hour. Woe was I. NB: Pictured is my friend, shortly before the split
Permalink BERLIN, GERMANY I thought people were trying to get out of the Matrix? Halfway through my adventure, I decided to dye my hair. Things did not go swimmingly, and I was first aware there was a problem when my friend started to cry with laughter at the hairdresser’s. I had reminded her of Donald Trump. Pictured above is the best photo I could find of it, I am too vain to show you any others. But this picture also has another purpose; it shows me at the start of my night. By the end I was somewhere in Berlin trying to get to a club called the Matrix. Lost, dazed and confused a man offered to take me to his apartment, which was just around the corner. I declined, and met my friends the next morning who commented, “I thought people were trying to get out of the Matrix?” Well played universe, well played.
Permalink STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN Solna Hostel Solna Hostel is the cheapest hostel in Stockholm. By Stockholm, I mean a 30-minute train ride out of Stockholm and a 20-minute treck past flats for the unemployed into a hostel that overlooks a lovely car wreck. By this stage I had met up with my two school friends, although, they weren’t impressed by my thrifty ways. The website shows a traditional Swedish cottage with quaint flowery curtains and wooden floors. The reality was a polish man sitting in his underwear eating a pickle. True story. We ended up leaving to go into the city because my female friends were “uncomfortable”. I loved it. NB: The picture is of us leaving.
Permalink LONDON, ENGLAND Down and out in London When my sister moved to London she was 21 and a law student with dreams of working for the UN. Something about the place made her instead want to be a backup dancer, which is what she has been trying to do ever since. When I rocked up I hadn’t spoken to anyone in English for a long time, so I was very pleased to see her, even though she took me to a place that served a whole egg on a pizza (which turned out to be surprisingly delicious! It beat the fried rats served at Beijing street stalls anyway). She was young and foolish! But I was even younger and foolisher and we ended up having a fight when I vomited in her kitchen after a fun night out on the town. She threw me out onto the street, quite literally, screaming “Get your fucking stuff, and get out of my house!” My family is not very normal. But hey, no judgements it wasn’t even the worst time I had in London, that came when I accidentally started living in a family home with teenage children… but that’s another story. NB: As you may have guessed, this is my sister. She looks unimpressed which is mainly because she is. This photo is not going in her portfolio.
Permalink BEIJING, CHINA It really is a cat! When I was walking back one night through the markets a lady stopped me as I was looking at a neon-orange fur scarf. “This is leather!” she said, “Real leather!” already with my cash in hand, I corrected her “No, this is called fur.” “No, is leather.” She said, indignantly. “Yes, it’s real but this is fur, not leather.” “NO! IS REAL LEATHER!” I still bought it. Later in the week I asked some girls if it was a cat, because the ball at the end felt strangely like a paw. They didn’t understand so I meowed and they all smiled, excitedly patting my scarf saying; “Yes! Yes!” then I started crying and they all said “No! No! No!” I love cats. I like that they feel so good around your neck. NB: This is a picture of my cat, who wouldn’t go near the scarf. He knew dammit, deep down, he knew.
Permalink SHANGHAI, CHINA Losing your shit in Shanghai This is where I ended up in hospital after I feinted at the top of the famous TV Tower (pictured above). It was moments after I’d been hysterically laughing to myself about a sign for the lift labelled “space capsule.” I had to have an I.V. drip and stay overnight after the doctor told me I was sick. I said “With what?” confused, she paused a while and, having a minor revelation, answered “With a sickness”. I took a photo of myself wearing the I.V. drip in the mirror. Unfortunately the flash rendered the photograph too bright and my delirious face was indistinguishable. It happened though.
Permalink GUANGZHOU, CHINA Hotel by the hour By the time I reached Guangzhou I’d had food poisoning everyday for two months. Fever ridden and desperate for a bed I asked the taxi driver to take me to a hotel. I had great visions of a friendly youth hostel, relatively cheap with a full continental breakfast. Instead I walked into a place with weird stains all over the carpet and a club downstairs that played music to the wee hours. After sleeping for nearly a week straight I decided it was time to go to Shanghai. When I checked out I realised the rooms were rented by the hour, and the club downstairs was reserved for gentlemen. It was weird. NB: This is a picture of me telling off a tuk-tuk driver and wearing his hat, which is what I would liked to have done to the man that dropped me at the brothel.
Permalink KRABI, THAILAND Sleep, sleep now. Being a cheapskate is what mainly gets me into trouble. I caught a ferry from Malaysia to Thailand and landed in a deserted, closed down port with one single man standing there, offering lifts in his station wagon. I got in his car with a 40yr Old Russian man. This leg of the journey was, surprisingly, the safest one. When I got out of the car the Thai man and his wife were laughing and laughing as they drove off. What happened next involved a series of pointing, both me whilst buying a ticket, and a host of Thai locals who were, well, mainly just pointing at me. I got on a bus to Krabi where a lovely man befriended me. He asked me where I was from, where I was going etc. and said, “You have money.” He then put a blanket over me, saying, “Sleep, sleep now.” Ten minutes later, he tried to steal my wallet. When I got off the bus at 2am I was left on the side of the street. Petrified, I walked for about half an hour until I saw a 7-eleven. Relieved, I walked in and asked for a phone card, I needed to call my mum. What she would do other than offer hysteria for comfort, I wasn’t sure. When two locals told me to get in their car I instead opted for a passing American man who drove me on the back of his motorbike into the town centre. It wasn’t until we began moving that I smelt the alcohol on his breath. But it wasn’t that which scared me, more so the combination of not wearing a helmet and the torrential rain. NB: I took this photo in Thailand. It’s of a bird standing on a cow. You don’t see that every day.
Permalink LANGKAWI, MALAYSIA Getting into a strange man’s van… I’d been in Asia for roughly two weeks. One night I was walking back to my hostel when a strange man approached me on the street with a van asking “Hey girl, where you going?” to which I replied “An internet café.” Seeing as I was in the middle of a rainforest, he laughed and said, “My friend has an internet café. Yeah, yeah lady! It’s true, I take you there.” Obviously I thought it was a good idea and I got in his huge white serial-killer-esque van. After driving for about 20 minutes with him constantly saying “Just up here! Just up here!” I opened the door and got out of the moving vehicle.  ’Jump and roll’ I told myself, ‘just jump and roll’.
Permalink PERTH, AUSTRALIA Leaving Home This is me aged 19, shortly before I left on my first frightening adventure. Look at those youthful, athletic legs. The innocent baby-face, the peace sign… actually, ignore the peace sign. Allow yourself to get inside that white, middle-class private school girl head of mine – I was a child I tell you! My biggest worry in life was lying about who I wanted to win Australian Idol! I was not ready for the big bad world…