Monday, January 31, 2005 :: Chris
Small World My Arse
I've had this nagging thought that's been growing over the last 12 months - you're running out of time. This is usually the preserve of 50 somethings - clearly I'm having my mid life crisis early. But I can’t shake it. Everytime I read the newspaper I realise that not everyone makes it to 70. In a proper, oh-shit-it-could-be-me sort of way. There's none of the detached interest of when I was younger. A lot of creative people seem to drop dead around 55, 60. That's only 25, 30 more years for me. And there's so much to do. I'm living in fear of the finite.

The dilemma is that even where's so much to do, you can't tear around trying to do all of it, because you won't enjoy any of it. You have to really think about the things you really want to do. Because you can do anything, but you can't do everything. And the only downside of travelling is that it's more addictive than crack cocaine. After you've done a little bit, you suddenly realise just how much else there is to see. Small world my arse. This world may be ever easier to move around but there is a vast wealth of experience and interest out there that we aren't usually even barely aware of.

My brain being more hole than sieve, I've had to resort to writing down all the things I've heard about that I want to do, otherwise they'll disappear from my imagination almost as quickly as they arrived.

Recently I realised that several of these things were clustered in the South Pacific, stretching across the small islands scattered in the vast ocean. Here they are:

Go swimming with humpback whales in Tonga

Dive on the scuttled Japanese war fleet at Truk Lagoon

Explore the waters of Papua New Guinea

See the Moai on Easter Island

And…heh…this is first on my list, although it should be last given my heightened chances of not coming back - diving with great white sharks in Southern Australia. Oh yes.

Given enough money, you could actually do all these in succession, travelling from Oz to New Guinea to Tonga to Chuuk...and on to Tahiti to fly to Easter Island.

Hmm. That'll be about 15 grand then.

More on world travel:
Google | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Wikipedia [permalink] | [1 comments]

The Business Of Politics

about MyThai
A journal about living and travelling in Thailand by Chris Mitchell, a British travel writer based in Bangkok, Thailand.

email Chris
more about Chris

Keep up to date with MyThai