Twenty years ago today I took my first step outside of Australia. For me international travel was like an unattainable dream. I was fortunate to be allowed to tag along with my then girlfriend, now wife, and her family back to their home countries of Malaysia and Singapore.
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Twenty years ago I found myself explaining why a freezer block isn’t dry ice, having my passport stamped for the first time, seating myself aboard my first Boeing 747, discovering the humidity of the tropics and eating thirteen sticks of satay until my mouth burned with spice.
Later I discovered the wonders of other culinary delights like roti canai, beef rendang, kuih and rambutans along with the horrible stench of the durian. I travelled nearly the length of Malaysia by rail and have caught a train in every other country since. I saw the Christmas lights of Orchard Road in Singapore and then had a first Christmas without celebration, staying in the house of a Buddhist.
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You can read more about that trip on my blog, but it was certainly a massive experience for a newcomer to international travel and one of the longest trips I’ve had outside of Australia.
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Twenty years later and overseas travel feels almost routine. In those twenty years I’ve visited as many countries on thirty-one trips and written hundreds of thousands of words on my travel blog and elsewhere. I have a cupboard full of a dozen currencies and an adaptor or six for every type of electricity socket you’ll find.
We no longer pack everything into hard suitcases, preferring to travel light. No more hunting down places to develop film and packing the results into big albums. Even the guidebooks stay at home now, reduced to pixels on a screen as the world goes digital. Travel to much of the world no longer seems so isolated as communication access becomes pervasive. A few keystrokes and you are reading the newspaper from home.
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However, travel remains an adventure that stretches the body and mind. And when we return it is with precious memories in sharper focus than the mundane of everyday life. Twenty years may make for many memories, but I’ll never forget my first trip.