Full disclosure: I hate reading travel blogs.

Let me be more specific. I hate reading travel blogs unless I’ve got a holiday booked and they’re about somewhere I’m going/want to go. Then I can’t get enough. But unless that’s the case I avoid them. What’s to like about someone else (who’s probably prettier than you) gallivanting across the globe to experience new cultures, eating amazing food and generally having a real good time about it?! They can charitably spare a few minutes to smugly write it all up for the people watching on from their desk jobs and Saturday night television. Bah! Humbug! Unless it is someone dear to me, I am the Scrooge of travel blogs.  It’s a completely bratty, older-sibling-jealous-of-the-attention-new-baby-is-getting kind of jealousy, but I can’t help it. I see green and can’t read without desperately wishing to trade it all in for a backpack and a one-way ticket.

And now that I’m back from my European sojourn (and won’t be on holidays again for some time) it’ll be a while before I read them again.

So this blog is dedicated to anyone else out there like me, sitting in a dusty boarded up dark room, wanting a reason to hate on travelling (even though you probably know it’s the best thing ever).

The worst things about travelling:

1. Manky hostels. Dark, dank and overcrowded dorms; pube-filled showers that stink of death; and kitchens with their own mouldy microcosms are just a couple of disgusting things about staying in a hostel.
2. Hangovers.Travelling is all about experiencing the best of new places – including local beers, spirits and wines. Your inevitable travel hangovers could see you wasting a precious day in the foetal position on your seedy bunk; walking around a museum wishing you were in your seedy bunk; or in transit feeling like you want to spew – did someone say 12 hour bus trip? Choose your hangovers wisely.
3. Shitty beds & even shittier pillows. You feel that? That’s your back going concave as a spring digs into your spine and the blood fills your head because, unsurprisingly, the 1mm thick pillow provides zero neck support.
4. Doing washing. Wasting a sunny day in the south of France by sitting in a Laundromat wasn’t in the brochure. Pro-tip: when you get to bikini bottoms as your only clean underwear, it is time.
5. Early checkouts on a hangover. When the hotel manager bursts into your room at 10:10am on an Oktoberfest hangover and reminds you checkout has passed, you may wish for the comforts of home. After then enduring an ice cold shower, shoving everything in your bag and remembering you flight isn’t till about 6pm you’ll feel a bit stabby. Save us, Kathmandu Travel God.
6. Carrying all your crap around with you: is balls.
7. Carrying all your crap up stairs: even worse balls.
8. Wasting a day in transit. You’ve allocated three days to see Paris. PARIS! But by time you’ve flown in, got your bags, gone through immigration, figured out the public transport to the hostel, got lost, hailed a taxi instead, and checked in to your hostel the first day is nearly gone and you are “le tired”.
9. Overnight buses. You won’t sleep. Starey-McStarison across the aisle will see to that. Nor will you know if you have enough time to go to the toilet or the bus will leave without you.
10. Paying for public toilets. It is very important that you carry spare 50 euro cents with you at all times, especially if you and your tour group all ate the Bolognese on the ferry from Greece. On the plus side time spent in the toilet queue can be used to brush up on your Italian: “how do you say ‘urgent’?”
11. Manky feet: Somehow day after day of strolling around old towns, hitting the beach, and climbing monuments in thongs* turns your feet into dried, cracked, dirty appendages not dissimilar to that of the encrusted preserved mummy feet you saw today in that museum.
12. Packing. Repacking, packing, repacking, losing things, packing again. Then you can’t find your tweezers. You know they’re in there… In 5 minutes your bag goes from neatly stacked order to chaos: clean mix with dirty, your moisteriser spills, and now you can’t find your passport… but god damn tweezing that hair felt good.

Now, don’t be shy… what do you hate about travelling?

*AKA jandals/flip flops/sandals – you know what I mean