Tales From a Female Traveller

10 Things I Miss About Home

Okay, so travelling abroad can be tough, everyone knows that… but what are the types of things you start to crave or miss while you’re away? You’d think it’d be the luxuries like hot showers and manicures right? Well, not for me…. For me…. I miss the stupid things. So I’ve decided to list them below in no particular order. Hopefully it will help refresh my thoughts a little bit.
Work – Believe it or not, I miss it. Plus it’s always great to have a steady income. It’s really frustrating when everything is in US Dollars and when your country does not use US Dollars, you’re funds dry up really quick. Thought it was cheap to travel Asia? Only if you’re American it seems.

Family – Crazy, but true.

Friends – Being able to just hang out and watch a movie or chat over a few glasses of red.
Riding in cars – This seems odd but when your main form of transport is on the backs of motorbikes and in Tuk Tuk’s you start to appreciate being able to wind a window up when dust starts to blow in your eyes.

English – It’s great to be able to communicate with people in their own language…. But a lot of the time, different areas have different dialects… so learning to say “hello” to someone in Khmer in the Cambodian capitol Phnom Penh is virtually useless when you arrive in a place like Battambang because it’s so different everywhere. At least in English if you say hello to someone they don’t tell you you’ve pronounced it wrong after pretending not to understand you the first million times you’ve said it.

High Heels and make-up – Let’s face it, I’m a girl, I like feeling pretty.

The lack of bugs – Seriously, they’re EVERYWHERE. Back home, if I found a bug in my soup, there is NO WAY IN HELL I would just take it out and continue eating it… but for some reason, over here it’s okay…. Odd.

My Bedroom – I don’t really know why, my bed for one thing… being able to sleep in a bed and not be paranoid that there are bugs in it.. see.. they’re EVEYWHERE. On the upside though, there are very few spiders.. and the one’s we have seen just look like giant daddy long legs.. well, apart from the spider the size of my face on the jungle trek… but other than that… relatively spider free…I’ve probably just jinxed myself though, so stay tuned for an update.

Television – I do.. I really do.. especially when the ads on TV here are in English, but the actual shows are in Thai....so you spend more time flipping through the channels trying to FIND the ads so you CAN watch them.. rather than flip channels to avoid them like you do back home.

Steak – I hardly eat any at home... but over here it seems to be all my tastebuds want...

posted by Lucyspeak @ 5:41 pm