Travel Days

Travel days are super fun, but of course they are super intense. I must mentally prepare for these days. Even then, it can still affect me. I prepare myself to face challenging situations. I have been very lucky to date, that for the past 12 months my travel days have been pretty smooth. But you have to be prepared for all sort of things when you enter an airport. And even more challenging when entering a big airport like Bangkok or Seoul. Because there are heaps of people, and they are all trying to get somewhere. In some cases they are trying to get there in enough time to get on the plane. So there are a lot of emotions. Things can get intense.

If you are able to take the stress of yourself, and allow yourself to be cool and just go with the flow it will make these days a little bit easier.

I remember I was travelling from Koh Samui to Kuala Lumpur. What is about a 2 hour flight turned into an almost 24 hour ordeal. If you weren’t calm and chilled, this would have totally broken you. I won’t go into every detail, but it was during that worldwide internet outage. It affected all flights around the world. And I just so happen to travel on that day. Thankfully the plane was safe. But had to wait in Singapore airport for almost 18 hours. But that is ok, Singapore airport is cool and it’s massive so there is heaps to do.

But that wasn’t the intense part.

The intense part came when I arrived in Kuala Lumpur airport at 2am. I am guessing they were transitioning into electronic immigration process. There were no signs anywhere saying you had to first submit your visa request before going through immigration. Luckily I saw something right at the last moment. Was able to fill in the form and process through immigration. But, no one really knew this. And we were all herded into a mass area to go through immigration. And some people made it all the way through to put your passport through the electronic immigration process. But if you hadn’t done your online form, you would have been denied. As there are no staff anymore because everything is electronic, people got rejected and were furious.

As you can imagine after this bit of fun, I make sure For instance, I get myself ready to be around many people, go through the protocols to board planes, and so on.

I am sensitive to loud noises and bright lights. So I make sure that I get ready for these moments as well. Maybe I have to put on my headphones, or wear my glasses inside. And that’s cool. I sort of just do what I need to do to get myself to be ok.

I then mentally prepare myself to have the travel day take up the whole day.

For some inexplicable reason, on my travel days, it always seems to take at least 6 hours out of the day. Of course, this depends on the length of the flight. You have to arrive at the airport a couple of hours in advance. Then, it takes a couple of hours to go through immigration and customs. Afterward, you have to organise yourself at the other end and get transportation to your destination. So, it always ends up taking much longer than you anticipate.

I am still constantly surprised by how long it takes. For example, a 1.5-hour flight around Southeast Asia takes at least 6 hours out of your day.

It’s cool, I see it as apart of travel. Of course there are other ways around this. But for now this is the way that I am travelling. So you have to take the good with the bad. And remember to enjoy; because at the end of the day you are doing something super cool that not everyone can do.

So enjoy!!!