Waiting in Korea (Not a career in waiting)

This is a rather hasty first entry of a blog that I've only just decided to write. It's hasty because I'm in Korea, and very soon won't be. I've decided to do my best at chronicling my second stint of travels in the South Pacific. I'm halfway there at the moment. This is a thoroughly different affair from the trip I took almost four years ago, being shorter, more travel-heavy, and, unexpectedly, more likely to get some of my photographs published in the Sunday Times.

A brief introduction then. Because I'm a member of the liberal upper middle class coming of age in the early 21st century, I took a Gap Year (a flimsy generalisation, proved wrong by so many of my friends). So, I rocked up in the offices of Gap Activity Projects, the company who had sent my brother to Nepal, and bumbled through their folders of destinations. Right at the bottom of the alphabetically ordered bookcase, was a folder on Vanuatu. I hadn't heard of it. Few have. But that's cool. It would be the band I knew before they became famous.

So, because I've suddenly remembered to keep this brief, I spent six months there. A glorious six months, probably the best of my life. Not even the malaria could ruin it, as it only reared it's ugly head when I was at university. (I didn't need to go to LA to get treated, because unlike Cheryl Cole, I'm not famous, and apparently if you're famous, it's a different type of malaria, and needs different treatment...).

Summarily, I spent those six months living in a village without electricity, teaching English to kids who basically already knew it, jumping off picturesque waterfalls and getting high on the ceremonial drug, kava. I also killed a pig. With an axe.

On our return, my fellow travelers and I were scattered across the UK, but still managed to remain in regular contact, with reunions every few months and one disastrous trip in a campervan. Now, I'm a graduate. So are most of the 'Van Clan'. We still meet, and at one reunion in Wimbledon, the idea started getting batted about that we should go back. I didn't really join in at first. I didn't have any money. My first foray into the Edinburgh Fringe had seen to that.

But then, my mind was changed. Of course I'd have to go back. It was all far too exciting. I began to justify it to myself that this was the last time in my life where it would be sensible for me to do something not very sensible. Then, all of a sudden, with money both borrowed and earned, tickets were booked. Shit was real. For about five weeks in November and December, Jack Noble, Tom 'Kilv' Kilvert (whose departure was ultimately delayed, placing him in the marginally less exciting Norfolk at the time of writing) and I would turn our backs on budget cuts and lack of sensible job prospects and go back to a place where money doesn't really matter. And of course it's silly. Nothing more than a temporary reprieve. We'll be going back to more debt and financial woe than we left with. But somehow it feels sillier not to... Oh, and there's that Sunday Times thing, but I'll talk about that another time.