Please welcome guest blogger Stan from http://www.travelniche.co.uk
One of the most exciting experiences I had as a child was our family re-emigrating out to Brisbane, Australia. Since that time I cannot do the return flights, sandy beaches, hum drum do what everyone else does on holiday stuff, in fact I'd rather stay at home, let me tell you why.
My dad always wanted to be like Alan Whicker, travelling the World, seeing exotic places and making every trip an adventure. On this particular trip the journey was broken up with stop over’s, flight changes, different airports, cities and countries. I funnily enough remember more about the airports than the actual places we visited, somewhere breath taking like Abu Dhabi, it's airport was a mosaic of blue tiles, whilst others were quite run down, but for a 13 year old lad it was awesome.
We spent 24 hours in Bangkok at a fantastic hotel. The first evening there we took a walk, my sister being blonde attracted a lot of attention from the locals, much to my mum's dismay, but as we found out later on they just wanted to touch my sisters hair for luck, apparently where we were they didn't see many blonde haired people and that's the thing I remember most about travelling is your always made a fuss of, from the airline stewardesses to the local people.
Another airport that stuck in my mind to this day was Kuala Lumpur, the reason I remember it was due to stepping outside and being hit by a wall of heat and my dad pointing down the road towards all these trees and greenery and saying "that's the jungle down there". Now whether that was true or not I don't care and I never want to find out, it was the jungle as far as I was concerned back then and I was an intrepid explorer, well that was until I got too far from Mum and Dad and they called me back.
So we arrive in Sydney and stay at a place called the people's palace, my mum described it as a dive but we had to wait until the following day to take a train to Brisbane, I had been on plenty of trains, but this one was a long haul trip well long haul coming from the UK, but to Australians it's a short trip of only 1200 miles give or take. The trip itself wasn't short of excitement either, there had been a derailing ahead of us, nothing serious but we had to stop at Coff's Harbour at about 2am, change over to coaches to travel the last 300 miles or so and finally we reached Brisbane, the journey took 5 days.
Now some people might think what a lot of aggravation and trouble just to go from the UK to Australia, but you have no idea of the things you see, the people you meet and the fun you can have. So is there a moral to this story? well no not really, it's about planning and being adventurous, don't just go to sunny Spain and spend 2 weeks getting sunburnt on a beach or in a hotel swimming pool, get more from your holiday and turn the travelling bit into something to remember, sometimes the roundabout way can work out more expensive but the experience is priceless.
