I'm trying to get my mind set for a rather unpleasant experience that I've got coming up. Later this week, I'll be boarding a plane for the excruciatingly long flight to the US. Once I'm back home, I know I'll have a lovely time and a great visit, but before then, I've got a 17 hour flight to endure. And that doesn't include all the airport time for check-in, layover and immigration.
I'm not a big fan of travelling. Never have been. I like being in new places or places that are far from where I live, but I hate getting to there. All the planning and packing and buying is enough to make me, quite frankly, sick to my stomach.
I never get enough sleep for the week or two before I head out on any trip. The anxiety of all the stuff I need to do just stacks up, and I end up waking up in the middle of the night from a stress dream about forgetting my passport or not packing something essential or having to endure a strip search at security.
And then there's all the stress of actually flying. I'm a very nervous flyer at the best of times. I get very skittish with even the slightest bit of turbulence.
Then there's the prospect of being stuck in a big metal tube in the sky with a bunch of people whom I would never willingly spend any time, forced to choke down what can only in the most generous definition be considered food. It's utterly ghastly.
I know that I should feel grateful that I actually have the means and the opportunity to travel so freely — and I really do. There are lots of people who would willingly endure what I consider such terrible conditions for the chance to visit another country. But when you've made the trip as many times as I have, the bloom is well and truly off the rose.
But really, It's just a day of discomfort. After that it's two weeks with my friends and family, whom I rarely get to see, living here in Thailand so far away from home.
I'll really enjoy my time back there, seeing people and things I rarely get to see any more, and getting to eat the favourite foods I miss when I'm away.
Of course, always in the back of my mind will be the fact that I've got another trans-Pacific flight awaiting me. All those hours in the sky and in airports across the ocean.
I'm a lucky guy.
Sean Vale
Editor
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