The Thailand leg of STA Explorer Ali’s round the world trip has been emotional to say the least.  After spiralling into a pit of despair after loosing her wallet in Bangkok, Ali swings into delight at the efforts of the Grand Palace staff who help her recover it. In Chiang Mai her taxi hits a tourist, but she discovers a talent for cooking. Back in Bangkok, she is reunited with an old friend and riffs on the joys of seeing a friendly face when travelling solo. And then they take a trip to the legendary bridge over the River Kwai, and the nearby WWII memorial museum, becoming ‘quite maudlin and teary’.

Ali gives a raw and touching picture of the extreme highs and lows of travelling alone. Don’t miss it.

Recently we caught up with the leech fearing, yet hard trekking troubadour, Alison – STA Explorer the long way home.

Since then, there have been updates. Firstly a reflective post about the hike that nearly did in our STA-er and what she learnt? 10 points collated efficiently that’ll make your trekking future that little bit easier. As snippet here’s number nine:

“9. You will need Wet Wipes. You will not have a shower for many days. You will smell if you don’t take Wet Wipes. Take Wet Wipes.”

These gems of advice are followed by her experiences involved in visiting the Royal Chitwan National Park. Besides more leech contact time, the trip did give Alison food-for-thought regarding her attitudes to the ethics involved in using animals in the tourist industry, all of which you can read here.

Finally there is an update about arriving in Bangkok and the two nights of luxury travelling she’s afforded herself. But as Alison asks herself,

“…how long can it last?”

Find out here…

It seems that communication has been a problem for our STA Explorer Alison. Going under the name of The Long Way Home for STA you can read about her travels to date here. As for the sarcasm thing, well, it happens to be Alison’s preferred form of interaction, and when your tour guide doesn’t really get it, problems can arise.

However, such cultural obstacles are obscured by the full on mutiny toward the sarcasm-less Priya (her guide), which occurred after a particularly tricky bus ride experienced by some of Alison’s Sri Lanka traveling counterparts. The group has shrunk somewhat after the uprising, though Karena and Nikki (mutineers who thought better of it) did:

“…stumble into the hotel with their tails between their legs, after being literally left at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere by the others.”

How did the remaining five and Priya cope? By getting drunk on Arrak of course!

It’s a while since we’ve heard from the lovely Alison, the expat Aussie making her way back home via most of the rest of the world. But this week she’s made up for her lack of internet access in Asia with a blistering series of posts about her time in Sri Lanka, where she seemed to take in pretty much every tour and attraction on offer.

Why was the Elephant Transit Home on the fringes of Uda Walawe National Park ‘one of the highlights of the trip’? What was her best Timal meal to date, eaten in the religious city of Kandy? And what should you do if, on a 12km walk through the Belihuloya jungle, you find yourself absolutely and completely swarming with leeches?

To find out the answers, you know what to do (clue: see those yellow bits? Click.)

Native Australian and resident of London for six years, Alison is homeward bound in style. Booking with STA Travel, Alison decided to spice up the otherwise routine return journey by visiting eight countries on the way back. 

Guided by the omniscient , Alison has been safely guided through Turkey and has since reached Kyrgyzstan – which, in her own words, is adjective-defeatingly incredible. Through her blog, On The Road Home, she describes her experiences in colourful detail. This account of her experiences in this relatively unknown country is fantastic and a must read for anyone tempted to go somewhere fresh and unexpected. 

So what has Alison been getting up to? Well, it seems her prior faith in the spreadsheet was misplaced as she declares herself “terribly underprepared for this trip”. But despite losing her sleeping bag somewhere between Turkey and Kyrgyzstan and going on the Asian Food Poisoning Diet, Alison was pleasantly surprised by Bishkek – which is far from the urban communist sprawl she expected. In fact, her entire account may surprise most of us (it certainly surprised me). 

There’s no point going into too much detail here about what Alison’s been up to - you can just visit her blog or Flickr photo album for that. So to read her account of camping on the Dragoman Central Silk Route trip, friendly (and not so friendly) interaction with the locals and a certain desire to go baby donkey-pilfering, click on any of the links in this article.  

STA Explorer Alison goes by the handle The Long Way Home – check out previous posts featuring her on STA Travelbuzz by clicking the link

Alison or by her STA Explorer name, The Long Way Home, is on her way and populating her travel blog On The Way Home like a supreme blog being. Although only at the beginning of her travel-venture the journey is well underway.

Currently in Turkey she has been recently struggling with her pronunciation. It is around the name Ergirdir, a location on the shore of a lake by the same name. The post Ergirdir … try pronouncing that explains the issue:

“I thought it was pretty straight forward, ‘Erg-a-dear,’ but everywhere I went, people just looked at me blankly.  I gave up and permanently carried the name written on a piece of paper.”

As a true traveller working for the good of the community, Alison has paved a path for those following her route by creating two posts recommending and reviewing. The first of these passes on the details that you’d be keen to know about the Caretta Pension in Patara, such as being

“…up a steep hill with some calf-testing steps, but it is spotless and spacious.”

The second covers the Lale Guesthouse which was recommended to Al and she took up residence in a dormitory with four beds,

“For the price (about 7 pounds/night) it was reasonable, but I longed to be in the private rooms which looked a lot better serviced and more comfortable (and had air con!!)!  However, my room was a stones throw from the lake edge and excellent swimming.”

Al’s latest entry is all about Konya, The Birthplace of the Whirling Dervish. That is the claim to fame and she admits that there is little more to do than visit the tomb of the poet Mevlana Rumi. Nevertheless her post is enlightening, and Konya provided some interaction with English speakers. Two Scottish ‘lads’ who she said goodbye to the day after, leaving them leaning from their hotel window smoking and sipping on a cold one. As Al says herself,

“Nice!”

New STA Explorer Alison descirbes herself as an ‘organised, structured lass’. Good thing really, as she’s facing some serious upheaval as she moves from London back to her homeland Australia - and visits eight countries in four months along the way.

As she writes in On The Road Home, the blog she’s created to chronicle her experiences, the cornerstone of her trip planning has been The Spreadsheet, a colour-coded masterpiece ‘that lısted where and when I wanted to travel, which tours wıth which companies I’d chosen and how much İ thought it all would cost’. Deciding to plan and book her journey with STA Travel, Alison initially found sterling support from Beth in the Ealing Broadway branch, who

relentlessly worked on my itınerary, working and reworking the order of things to get me the best price on flights that she could find. She even took a moment wıth me to grieve the loss of Mongolia when that proved to be a country too far for my budget. She was there to have a little clap when İ paid for the trip and hold my hand through all manner of creative debit/credit card management.

However, she got an unwelcome shock when she returned to the branch to find that Beth had disappeared. Her laid-back successor Saxon has done his best to get to grips with her repeated questions and crises (such as her passport being held hostage by the Uzbekistan Embassy), and thankfully Alison’s organisation paid off as she’s ‘finally lıvıng The Damn Spreadsheet.’

Her first stop is beautiful Istanbul, where she is staying in a basic hostel but has loved the Topkapi Palace and Grand Bazaar. She’s moving onto central Asia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand and Malaysia over the next months, promising to review the many adventure tours she’s booked along the way with STA, and uploading photos onto her Flickr account. So follow her blog and get involved by leaving a comment. If it’s a thorough and as opinionated as her travel planning, you’d be mad to miss it.