expats

Going solo

On International Women’s Day, Kaye Holland says that every woman should travel alone at least once

“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.”

The intrepid British explorer Freya Stark may have uttered these sentiments a century ago, but her words still ring true today.

I should know. I took my first trip alone – the ubiquitous gap year Down Under – at the age of 18 and haven’t stopped travelling solo ever since. There have been spells living and working abroad on my tod in the Middle East, China and the Cayman Islands, stints pursuing the digital nomad lifestyle in Colombia, Hawaii, America, Argentina et al and too many breaks – most recently I prescribed myself a two days in Tbilisi,  Georgia – to mention.

Sometimes I have travelled solo simply because I’ve been single, friends and family haven’t fancied my choice of destination, our finances didn’t match up or our annual leave wasn't compatible. Mostly, however, I’ve travelled alone because I love to.

When I step, solo, off a flight, I get to try a new, different life on for size. Nobody knows if I have been dumped, sacked or succumbed to London’s winter gloom: I can become who I want to be.

IMG_0399.jpg

In Buenos Aires, that was a tanguero (tango dancer) and, accordingly, I would rise in the afternoon to work, before grabbing a bite to eat and heading to a tango class around 10pm. After the class, I’d go onto a tango club to milonga the night away, arriving back home and climbing into bedcirca the very Argentine hour of 6am.

In India and Sri Lanka, I’d lower myself onto a yoga mat for my very own Eat, Pray, Love moment and in Hawaii, I would rent a surfboard. I may not be Hawaiian but when I was riding the waves off the world-famous Waikiki shoreline, with the sun beating down on my back, I was able to pretend that I was.

When abroad alone, I adore waking up when I want and eating and drinking what I want – although often I find that I am only on my own when I choose to be. That’s the thing about flying solo: you’re much more approachable when you’re on your own than in a couple or a group. 

Hawaiian Nights

Hawaiian Nights


In Japan, I ticked off Kyoto’s temples with Ruth – a Scottish woman who is still a friend today.  I hiked up Diamond Head in Hawaii with a strapping American military man who I met when collecting my backpack off the carousel at Oahu airport. In the indigenous north of Argentina, I ate empanadas and explored the gorgeous Cachi valley with the lovely Laura, a German lady on her own adventure.

I swam from island to island in the South Pacific Ocean with Thomas, a Swiss solo traveller, and enjoyed many crazy nights in Beijing with Americans, Amanda and Geraldine, who have become two of my closest friends.

Cachi calling

Cachi calling

My message? Don’t be scared to travel alone for flying solo teaches us as much about ourselves as it does about the different lands and diverse cultures we encounter.

Certainly my solo trips have changed my life for the better and stayed with me long after I returned home.

So go. Now. Or in the words of Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Remote working in Argentina

Remote working in Argentina

Words and pictures: Kaye Holland

Read the post here: http://www.justabouttravel.net/2020/03/08/going-solo-2/




Ten things you need to know before moving to China

China isn’t the easiest expat posting but my time in Beijing embodied everything I love about living and working in another country: namely new experiences and the challenge of trying to comprehend them. If you are planning on taking the plunge and moving to the Middle Kingdom here are 10 things to think about before you go:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/before-you-go/ten-things-need-know-moving-china/

Ways in which living abroad changes you

If adventures won’t befall a young woman in her own village, she must seek them abroad.” So wrote Jane Austen in her novel Northanger Abbey.

Growing up in Watford - a town Lonely Planet once labelled as “the kind of place that makes you want to travel” - Jane Austen’s words resonated with me. 

There’s nothing really wrong with Watford per se but I couldn’t help thinking: there has be more to life than this corner of Hertfordshire?

So at 18, after finishing school, I escaped Down Under on a gap year. I followed this up by spending my university summers working as an au pair in Switzerland. 

At 25 I made my way to the Middle East where I lived and worked with Emiratis for three years, before swapping Arabia for the Caribbean. China came calling after the Cayman Islands, followed by Argentina and Hawaii.

Fast forward to 2017 and I’m finally back ‘home’ in London, by all accounts one of the greatest cities in the world.

Don’t get me wrong - I do love London’s bright lights, black cabs, cultural wealth and amazing restaurants and get where Sir Samuel Johnson was coming from when he famously remarked: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”

But my experiences and adventures abroad have shown me that life outside of London is just as valid, as life in London. 

Here’s how living abroad changes you…


Always trust your gut instinct
“I really wish you’d reconsider your decision,” my friend Henry said. “I hear it’s dangerous down there.”
The decision he was referring to was the one I had, circa January 2015, to move to Argentina. Henry wasn’t the only one with concerns. Plenty of friends thought I was bonkers - why would I want to leave Britain? What was I thinking?
I was thinking a lot of things… In Britain it felt like it was impossible to achieve a work-life balance and as though everyone I knew was struggling with anxiety or depression. Maybe, just maybe, the happy go lucky South America lifestyle would be the answer? It was. The time I spent living and working in Argentina - where they treat strangers like Brits treat lovers and always have time to stop for a Cafe cortado or glass of Malbec with friends - was one of the happiest I have known

 

You become a stranger in your homeland
American author, Thomas Wolfe, once wrote: “I have a thing to tell you. That is you can’t go home again.”
Wolfe was wrong. You can, of course, go home but it will never be the same again. While you’ve been having adventures the other side of the world, friends and family back home have got married, moved house… In short, they’ve moved on, and all you can do is watch from the sidelines.
Admittedly you’ll never lose good friends and your family will always be family, but the emails and phone calls will lessen and you won’t be as readily included in social gatherings as you once were.
To them you’re not normal for shying away from settling down while, for you, normal is now nothing more than a setting on a washing machine.

 

Minimalism rules
Moving abroad makes you realise that “things” don’t equal happiness. In fact, you’ve learnt that more stuff simply equals more stress and you’ll start to favour a minimalist approach to life - and pride yourself on your ability to fit your home into a backpack.
What you thought was ‘home’ doesn’t exist anymore. You’ve learnt that home is not a place or a postcode. It is not made of bricks and mortar and never has been. Home is inside your head and your heart.

 

Freelance work is no longer to feared
The likelihood is you won’t be able to hold a steady, regular job on your return. Or, if you do, you’re daydreaming about jacking it in. You resent being stuck in a sterile office slaving away for someone else. You have your own dream and you’re working towards it but, for now, chances are you’re a freelancer earning a living from writing, teaching, film extra work, photography, leading walking tours…. anything to avoid working like a robot in a cubicle all day.

 

You’ll have more friends abroad than at home
You’ll find that the friendships that truly matter to you tend to be long and far apart. They may have been formed at airports or in bars abroad - basically outside of your comfort zone - but they are the ones that now mean the most.
These are friendships with people you’ll only get to see every couple of years rather than week in and week out, but they are the ones that will last forever.
Foreign friendships are for the open minded who are thirsty for new adventures and know that the best relationships are forged across borders, not in them.

Dating is difficult
Dating won’t be a walk in the park. The usual dinner and movie date won’t impress you after impromptu asados in Argentina and secret supper clubs in Beijing.
Neither will his/her new car or watch - you’ve chosen a life full of experiences as opposed to possessions.
And when it comes to holidays with your other half? Well you’re too independent and won’t care whether your partner travels with you or not. Lets face facts: you’ll be too busy talking to stranger and making friends with like minded people from around the world.

You learn to live without people
Living abroad thousands of miles away and in different time zones from your family and home town friends, you’ve come to the conclusion that presence is not a requirement for company.
You’ve also discovered that no matter how much you once depended on someone - maybe it was your Mum, your best mate or your boyfriend - you can live without them. You know how to not only survive but thrive in a foreign county. You are enough.

 

Routine becomes a word to be dreaded
Uncertainty and starting anew no longer terrifies you, conversely it thrills you. In the aftermath of your adventures overseas, you’ve become addicted to new places, people and challenges and afraid of regularity which, for you, is now synonymous with dullness.
Or as the acclaimed author, Paulo Coelho, put it in his novel Manuscript Found in Accra: “To those who believe that adventures are dangerous, I say: try routine. That kills you far more quickly.”


Words and pictures: Kaye Holland

http://digitaledition.tntmagazine.com/ways-in-which-living-abroad-changes-you/

I love London, so why did I leave? (Part eight)

Kaye loves London, so why did she leave? Read the eighth part of her story exclusively on CD-Traveller
Continued from last time

Returning to London proved to be tougher than my time in the Middle East, Asia and the Caribbean combined. After almost five years abroad, it was Britain that felt like a foreign country and six months down the line, I was still adjusting.

It was an odd feeling for while I had anticipated feeling like an alien abroad, I hadn’t expected to feel like one in my own country. It took a while to realise that it wasn’t the UK that had changed – the Daily Mail still bangs on about immigration, the Metropolitan tube line continues to be suspended for engineering works every other weekend and Jenny et al can invariably be found in the Feathers pub on a Friday night – but me.

And after my international adventures, the comforts of home –  clothes that fit, familiar food, faces and surroundings – quickly became monotonous. I began to desire a new challenge and if it hadn’t been for the buzz building  around the upcoming London Olympic Games, I’m pretty sure I would have found myself seeking another overseas posting pronto.

Instead I came to the conclusion that if I was to have even a half chance of carving out a life in London, I needed to put down roots. It was time – at 31 – to stop living like a student in shared accommodation and find a flat of my own.

But finding a flat in the capital in January 2012 wasn’t without its own frustrations. I had my heart set on Shepherds Bush – with its multi cultural community, great gastro pubs, gritty market, modern Westfield shopping mall (that’s open until a civilised 10pm) and proximity to central London. Alas it wasn’t to be.

The one bedroom flats I could afford on a meagre journalist’s salary could best be described – arguably much like myself – as unconventional. By this I mean they were invariably situated above shops, in ex local authority blocks and/or had features – for example a back entrance – which rendered them unmortgagable with all the mainstream lenders. Not that the estate agents or mortgage brokers - both desperate for their fees - were ever upfront about this.

And so feeling disheartened after the aforementioned cowboys had chipped away at my deposit and unable to borrow from the Bank of Mum and Dad (I knew they couldn’t afford it), I gave up searchingin Shepherds Bush and cast my net further afield to zone five – specifically Harrow.

Why Harrow? To be honest it was a question I asked myself every Saturday I spent house hunting in Harrow. Hammersmith and Fulham it aint. But being only a stone’s throw away from Northwick Park Hospital, where I am a hospital radio volunteer, and a short commute from my Mum’s house, Harrow made sense. Plus – crucially –  the properties were within my price bracket. I decided to choose a good apartment without waiting eternally for the perfect one. And so I found a one bedroom ground floor flat that had what I wanted (a two minute walk to the tube station, shops, restaurants anda cinema) and made an offer. Today the flat is filled with my travel books and  two wardrobes worthy of Carrie Bradshaw.

As London basked in the Olympic glow and friends and family flocked to my new flat – for the first time in my life I had a place I could invite people over to – I began to feel that while readjustment had been tough, it had been worth it.

Olympic fever transformed the capital – and I fell in love with London all over again. Normal life was put on pause: the grey skies gave way to sunshine and the frowns on the faces of commuters were turned into smiles as everyone pulled together to stage the greatest Olympic Games the world has ever seen. The opening ceremony summed up everything that is great about Britain – our quirkiness and creativity.

But afterwards – as with any great party – the hangover took hold. The good mood did linger for a little while once the Olympic torch had been extinguished but, in my mind, it didn’t last long anywhere near long enough.

During the Olympics, I wondered: how could I ever have left London? A few months down the line, normality had returned ( people were once again pushing for a seat on the tube and had returned to being unenthusiastic about enthusiasm) and I started to feel stuck – a small cog in a big machine.

A couple of work trips to Canada and California respectively kept me going. In her hit song, California, Joni Mitchell famously sings:

"Oh California I'm coming home Oh make me feel good rock 'n' roll band I'm your biggest fan California I'm coming home."

These lyrics crept into my consciousness as I glumly fiddled with my in-flight socks on the journey home from LA to London, and mentally braced myself for the biting temperatures that awaited in Blighty. California, I realised, could easily feel like home. I found the food (veggie heaven), weather and enthusiasm of the people utterly irresistible.

Of course California (and by wider association, America) isn’t perfect. As an admirer of the NHS, I find a system which leaves millions of people unable to afford basic healthcare, truly shocking. And yes the US is gutless is about guns. I don’t agree with everything that Piers Morgan (the former British tabloid editor turned CNN host) says and does, but I fully support his crusade against guns in the US.

Nonetheless I am allowing myself to dream of living abroad again – this time in America. Is my path normal? No. Normal, as the American journalist Ellen Goodman, put it “is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it”. But perhaps I had to come back to London and give ‘normal’ a go to learn what truly makes me tick: travelling and exploring new options.

I don’t know how this story is going to end. Maybe I’ll end up emigrating in 2014.  Maybe I won’t. But one thing I am now certain of is this: I need to have the courage to live a life which is true to myself instead of the life expected of me, and can’t waste my life living in London chasing others ideas.

The realisation has been a long time in coming but finally, at 32 and three quarters, I have woken up to the fact that I don’t have to experience life the way I was told. No one ever changed the world by toeing the line. Or as a kindred spirit once said: “The future belongs to people who are brave enough to keep pushing, obstinate enough not to settle.”