Travel. The essentials!

"Summer time...and the livin's easy...easy wheezy, easy peasy, wheezy squeezy ....' You see what happens when you take a bottle of Pimm's on your travels! It makes for a giddy monkey! My advice, leave the booze at home, well,until you reach your destination that is!

Now I love preparing my gear before a trip. It's a little known fact that part of a monkey's rite of passage is being taught how to wash and iron your own undies. Indeed Michael Palin's book 'Around the world in 80 days' discussed the cultural impact of, and I quote "Rocking up to Casablanca wearing crusty keks". Keeping your pants fresh makes for a successful trip! So what does a small monkey take on his travels? Good question. Apart from several pairs of undercrackers I like to travel light. My bush hat, keeps the rain at bay and offers shelter from the burning searing sun, my rucksack complete with 'I love nursing' insignia (Mum's a nurse don't you know). Sunglasess, great for posing on the beach! and not forgetting plenty of the old smackeroonies! Anything else Me Dad can carry, well he's bigger than me!

Now planning a trip always involves picking up various maps, pens and paper and disappearing to the pub, I'm guessing that the landlady is a travel expert! One sunny afternoon during 2012 whilst planning a 3 week roadtrip we were approached by our local town councillor who took a quick look at our route and declared "You can't do that in 3 weeks". Dad just gave him one of his very special scowls! And of course we stuck to the route and had loads of time!

Leaving the UK for Asia was a tad more complicated and we didn't take all the paperwork to the pub! What I didn't realise at the time is that we were actually going to live in the Philippines! So, utterly surrounded (I have the photographs) with house sale paperwork, Visa applications, overseas bank account applications, travelling insurance and so on and so on and so on.It took about 6 weeks to coordinate everything that needed to be done! Poor old Dad was busy putting all our stuff into a metal box to be stored until we came back to the UK and Mum was trying to sort her new course weekends out! Chaos, complete chaos! and I lost several pairs of underpants!!!!

You see? Preparation is everything!!!

More later.

Tattybye Ed x

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