back to reality and pressing 'eject'

...finishing a round the world trip is not easy!

As you will see from my last entry on the previous trip it was an astounding feeling of personal accomplishment (...liking the new text jason!) when i finished and caught my flight home. Time spent at home with the family was great too, but as anyone will know not easy to keep enthusiatic about after several weeks- in turn months and then you start to panic.

My parents gave me some cash and the mission was to find a job, afterall i am university educated and well travelled, what else could i do huh!?! Well...

..there was a little secret tale not divulged in the previous adventures. Anyone who has travelled, particularly alone like i did and who has read the blog in question will know there was one thing missing in the content- there was no mention of any ladies i might have met. A young English guy goes around the world for 7 months to such fantstic places and doesn't meet any ladies? yeah right, c'mon!

There are alternative dimensions to every form of travel you choose and who (if anyone) you go with! These experiences helped shape me as a person and whatever happened within those 7 months was part of the experience of being a young twenty-something and exploring the places and people of the world. I severely doubt that any of the nice ladies i met travelling are reading but in case you are, i hope you are well and that you can understand.

In January of my trip, after a particularly heavy couple of weeks with Ricky from Milan (now living in Prague) hitting the bars in Thailand, i met a Polish girl in the mirror of my hostel at 4am on Koh San Road. We both decided to go to Chang Mai and go hiking, just like that, in the mirror that night brushing our teeth. We lost contact but somehow managed to meet again when my bus north a few days later stopped in some remote place to pick just 2 passengers up. One was Gosia and we didnt realise until the sun rose the next day and we saw each othergetting off the bus in Chang Mai. We found a place to stay (Julies Guesthouse, recomended) and booked a trek for 3 days. The trek was pants because for three days we saw not a lot excpet dense forest and we also got severely ill from eating something dodge. However...

...exhausted on Day 1 and heading into the early night we arrived at our mountain village. The group all in need of a cold beer and some soup before going to sleep, sat back outside and relaxed outside our large hut where we would sleep. There were three girls there already from a previous walk and nobody felt like socialising afterall we were knackered. As i sat outside on the bench recovering i heard a voice from behind the cane walled hut. In broken English the person explained that they live in Nice, somewhere i spent one year in 2003/4. As they emerged to sit around the fire we started to talk, we did not stop in broken French/ English until 5am. I met Lénaïc!The next morning she left to finish her walk and i continued with mine. We met again in Bangkok but it was difficult because she was with a friend on a 3 week trip and we only had the chance to spend a few hours together and take a meal with Andres and Alberto the Chilean guys i knew from Oz. Still we enjoyed each others company and said that we would try and meet in Europe one day.

...i continued my trip and we kept in touch but then it stopped as i found communication difficult from Perhentian. I recieved quite an upset series of emails and extending my trip certainly was not a popular decision. The truth is that after 5months of more travelling i started to ignore her and could really not imagine a life we would ever share. This was furthered in the weeks after i arrived home, the realisation of reality in the UK and all associated matters like finding work.

..so my folks gave me some money to help find a job and what did i do? Well i realised how easy it was to spend £24. And then i recieved a real kick-ass message of this French lady which made me realise a few things. She had made an offer since i returned which i had now been ignoring for 2 months, it was the end of her patience. That night i boooked a cheapflight to Paris for the same money i had spent on something stupid (...but of course necessary!!) in the Uk a few days before out of the cash i had. Shortly after and much to the confusion and probable annoyance to my folks i was arriving in Paris and searching for a train to Clermont-Ferrand (pictured) where she actually comes from in central France.

I had a fantastic week with her, wehre she looked after me, the risk we had taken looked promising and it was only when i left after the week that i realised i was in trouble. She came to spend 2 weeks with me in Barnsley and i took her to see some friends and other places (..its a bit colder in Yorkshire though!). Then a few more weekends and more and more time on MSN followed. Then about 2 months ago we decided we wanted to be together, just on problem- we don't live in the same countries let alone the same cities. She was awaiting acceptance to do her final year in Pyschology somewhere in France and failing this maybe she could move to England?!? Failing this would i move to France?!? Big questions/when i left France i said i would never return there to live, that i wanted soemthing new. I don't speakfluent French... etc

Then, October 17th or near she was accepted in Nice after a tense period for us both and it was decided that i would move to Nice. So here i am, in our appartment writing about it... ...incredibly it turns out i have a photo that proves we walked past each other ein the street 3 years before. There have been many strange twists to the story- she used to work on my residential street in Antibes and on my way to see her a very strange 'Polish' girl sat staring at me through the night in Luton airport- it was more scary than the attempted prostitute-muggers in Saigon.

It has been one month and my re-adjustment is near complete, today i write because over the next few months, maybe years... i hope to blog as i meet all the people i met from my trip around the world, starting in Europe. Right now i am poor and looking for work in this area but i have plans and hope to change matters, as and when i can i will go to see people and you are always welcome to stay here guys and gals! THnaks to cheap flights around Europe it is very easy to get to Nice. So come on and visit, it is better than Barnsley anyway! We have a great located place to visit the Riviera and catch up!

So thats watt happened next. Might be some time until i can update again but going to addstuff for sure and when i have a new camera some pictures too! Might also write about my life as i lie it out here in Nice trying to find a career, make my ideas happen or soemthing else unknown right now.

well thanks for reading. it really has been amazing to see what can happen within just a few months of returning from such a trip. I was not comfortable returning to live in England but i never imagined it would turn out like this. Am i running from the inevitable or am i making a future happen? only time will tell, like it has already!

...but right now, im happy.

My first day in Nice after drinking all night with my mates at home on a truly memorable last night in my local pub. Landlords revenge.

written by

50watts on December 7, 2006 from Nice, France

from the travel blog: Watt happened next..!?!

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50!

Good to have you back. Yeah, you were pretty much the first one to find the site and start using it, back before it was really even usable. Living in Nice with travelin' French girls sounds like the way forward.

It's interesting to see that the most dedicated users of the site are your first crop of converts, along with a few more that they converted themselves. I mean, yeah, there are lots of members that found the site on their own, but it's amazing how much this thing is spreading from word of mouth.

But yeah, I'm glad you came back to check in on things. That's the one problem I still want to solve with this site, having a place where people will want to hang out even when they're not on the road anymore. We get lots of people checking up on friends who are out on the road, but I'd love to see more people actualy planning their trips to meet up with people they found on Blogabond. The BlogGirl & Vegitibbles did it, so at least I know it's possible. It would be cool if the site were set up so that that sort of thing would naturally happen more often.

Gotta run. more later. Good to have you back!

Jason

written by

Jason Kester on December 7, 2006

And hey, it looks like you stumbled across the latest bug to come along, that's caused a few duplicate blog entries. I don't suppose you could help me track it down? I think it's related to the AutoSave feature that went live a couple weeks back.

Could you try to remember the EXACT steps that you went thru to put this post up? Here is my best guess of what might have happened:

- write a bunch of text
- oops. forgot to upload my photos for this entry
- copy & paste to notepad
- upload photos
- hit finished & go back to blog entry
- copy & paste from notepad
- fill in title, etc. again.
- hit save.

Is that close? I'm trying to track down exactly what steps are needed to make double posts show up, so that I can reproduce it at my end, and make sure it stops happening.

Thanks,
Jason

written by

Jason Kester on December 7, 2006

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