P.S. Flackistillontour Pt II

• Christmas Karma 
• Ireland..... Tea/Cake/Tea/Cake/Tea/Cake
• New Years resolutions
• Whatnextontour?

I had been expecting to come home to a month of Christmas socialising, home cooking and long days of yoga before job applications.  That all changed when I found out that my mum was not on good form and I needed to be nurseflack for a while.  Being a two person family team it took a bit of getting used to and meant I had to get on my pinny and be the cooker, cleaner and PA.  Christmas didn’t really happen; for most of it I felt like I was in an episode of Andy and Lou pushing mum around in her wheelchair.  But it did mean I got the chance to polish up my Indian cooking skills and after a bit of bickering remembered just how important family is.

For New Years my mum had her friends over to help out so I headed off to Ireland.  I'd missed Ireland so much, from the fact that I saw more fake tan on the flight over to Dublin than I’d seen in the last year to the fact that I spent the entire flight talking abou the weather with an old couple from Wicklow.  And once I got to Ireland life was simple: Tea/Cake/Tea/Cake/Guinness/Friends/Guinness/Friends/"I’ll put on the spuds”.   I ended up by the fire listening to Irish Folk music at Johnnie Foxes one day.  I’ve been to Johnnie Foxes lots of times but never gone into the tourist bar and this time went in by mistake and left in a blur of Guinness and crackin music grinning from ear to ear.  I’ve missed Ireland badly.

Me tucking into a spuds based diet in Kerry with the lovely Deenihan family

New Years Eve was a cosy few pints with good friends down in Co.Kerry.    My week there involved kids running around and constant children’s DVD’s.  It was the opposite of my Christmas and all of a sudden I was glad to be back in the west (and even happier to be in West Ireland!).  I noticed a massive boost in people’s optimism now that Ireland is out of the bailout and even caught one friend getting quite stressed over the new design of the front of the BMW range.  She doesn’t even own a BMW - 1st world problems eh!  And that’s where comments such as ‘welcome back to the real world’ start to sink in.  The real world is what you make it but if it involves stress over aesthetics then I don’t want to be part of it.  

What you face when you work in a developing country....

Ah Jaysus - it's killing me.....

oh and one other thing about the 'real world'.....

I've come back from long trips enough times to know that travelling is one of the best life experiences you can get.  So New Years resolutions?  I started travelling solo in my early 20s, then one year I made a resolution to leave the UK and go work in South America and it changed everything (a decision made over dinner with my friends at a New Years Eve party).  I'd lived overseas before but all of a sudden I had an appetite for more diverse cultures and would love to see more people do the same.  Lucky for me most of my mates are grounded enough to enjoy life wherever they are.

However, the goal of this blog was as a little memoir to myself but also to try and encourage more people to travel.  And I don’t mean a two week package in Goa, Thailand or a caravan in Waterford.  They are all well and good for holidays.  I mean live with locals, work with locals, get sick with locals and love their life.   You can get your thrills at the local theme park or jumping out of planes but trust me it is nothing compared to boarding a plane and travelling to an unknown place. Arriving knowing nothing - not the people, the language, whether your ATM card will work or if you have network coverage (unless you’re in a Vodafone advert and travel with a brand new tablet).  In india this would equate to a bad Dr Who episode, arriving on a bus and seeing lots of people with wiggling heads marching towards you.  Now that is a real adrenaline rush. Don’t cling to the illusion.

It's one thing us lads doing it and I'll be continuing a bit more travel this month heading back to India in a month but the ultimate in adrenaline is a girl travelling alone.  I love to see girls out there discovering the world with no makeup, a dusty pair of hiking boots and a confident stride.  The hassle girls get from us boys back home is nothing compared to oogling eyes of foreign lads.  Here's a salute to all those girls travelling solo :)