"the last time i saw you"

Last weekend, in the wee hours of Sunday morning, I put on one last swipe of lipstick, grabbed my purse, and locked the door behind me. It was just before 3am, and the streets around my flat in East London were fairly empty, save the lights from passing traffic. A group of people speaking Spanish, their night winding down, walked down the sidewalk laughing and talking. I walked to the bus stop and stood next to a man smoking a cigarette and looking at his phone. The bus pulled up a few minutes later, and I got on board, taking a seat at the back.

I was on my way to the Victoria and Albert Museum, one of my favourites in the city. I have been many times in the past, and my most memorable visit had been in 2013 to see the David Bowie exhibit. It was strange, taking the bus to the museum at such an ungodly hour of the night. Nearly everyone else on the bus seemed like they were going home, their journey ending. Mine was just beginning, on my way to see Savage Beauty, the showcase of Alexander McQueen’s work.

Nearly our entire group opted to take a scenic flight over the delta. We would be camping in the delta for two days, swimming in its shallow pools and navigating its twisting arteries by dug-out canoe, but as an introduction to the area, we could choose to fly over it first. At around £150 for an hour flight, it seemed like a good deal. In the little airport in Maun we handed over our credit cards and our passports, then were shuttled six at a time to tiny airplanes basking in the heat on the runway.

I could tell we were all a bit nervous; small planes have a tendency to do that to even the bravest souls. We took off, quickly leaving the the small city of Maun behind us. Within minutes, the delta appeared, verdant and alive, a contrast to the dusty ground we had spent the last few days learning. The water fanned out below, snaking its way through the lush landscapes. It seemed to go on forever, this vivid green against the blue of the sky.

Over the last year and a half, my degree and my job have taken up most of my life. I have sadly had to let this blog slip behind a little bit, which breaks my heart. I love writing blog posts. Sometimes I go back and read old blog posts for inspiration for the book I’m writing, and once in a while I feel really proud of what I’ve written. A lot of the time, however, I cringe. I’m totally guilty of doing some really lazy travel writing. Lock me up and throw away the key, because I have definitely described a city as a “fascinating blend of the ancient and the modern”.

So, mostly out of sheer self-shaming (in the hopes that I never blog/write using these words again… or at least minimise my use of them) here are the words I think are overused in travel writing and travel blogging.

I’ve been through a lot of customs and immigration experiences. For the past year and a half living in London, for example, I go through customs and immigration about two or three times a month, depending on where I travel. As I travel on a Canadian passport, every single country – including my own – checks my passport and usually asks me a few questions (as opposed to anyone with an EU or UK passport, for example).

I’ve written about how to cope with customs and immigration before; I wrote that article a few weeks before I returned to Canada from nine months in Central and South America, and I was worried what kind of questions they’d ask. I always remember my dad telling my sister not to let Colombian officials stamp her passport… uh, it doesn’t work like that, dad. Anyway, in all the travelling I’ve done, and I’m sure, that you’ve done, there have been some harrowing, stressful, hilarious, and just downright weird experiences when crossing borders. Here are just a few I’ve had.

On our last day in Yangon, we went in search of food near the market. Tired and overwhelmed from wandering in and out of the maze of stalls, we wanted to find a place where we could sit down. As it was the middle of the afternoon, however, many places seemed to be shut. We rode our bikes into a parking lot, and noticed an unmarked restaurant to one side, so pulled up to see. There were no walls; it was just a cement slab with a wood roof over it, but there were a few wooden tables and red plastic stools, and a small kitchen to one side. Nobody else was there.

“Do you want something to eat?” A middle-aged man with a mustache and kind eyes approached us, speaking in perfect English.

We finally had our tickets in hand and entered the theatre through the front doors in time for the 7:30pm performance. There is nothing like the buzz in the air before a great show, of spectators finding their seats, of that magic that occurs when the lights dim and a hush falls over the crowd. Kasha and I certainly weren’t disappointed with our seats as we were front row centre. And then, the music started, the curtain lifted…