New year, new travel goals for 2024

Hello again everyone, I wish you all a happy new year! As many of my readers have read, yes I am going to have to do jury duty in January 2024 for a few weeks and thus I'm going to reward myself by creating a list of travel goals for 2024. I created a list for 2023 and I only scored 5/8 on that list, which isn't bad but perhaps that list was simply too ambitious. So here is a brand new list for a brand new year and I think this one is a far more realistic list for me to accomplish in 2024.

1. Go on a long haul trip outside Europe 

Sadly, I didn't get out of Europe in 2023, the furthest I made it was to the city of Tiraspol which is an exotic location in Russia-controlled Transnistria (that was a fascinating trip and I even did a whole post on it) but that's still Europe and even if I was in Russia, I will have to go pretty far east beyond the Ural mountains before I was technically in Asia. I aim to make it at least out of Europe. The easiest way for me to make it out of Europe is to either visit North Africa again (Morocco or Tunisia) or maybe Turkey, as long as it isn't European Turkey where Istanbul is. I am doing some research at the moment and Turkey has removed all visa requirements for British tourists in 2020 so that's another reason to visit. 

2. Go on a longer trip (more than 7 days) 

My trips in 2023 were not that long to be honest, the longest one was only six days long and that was my trip to Moldova, Transnistria and Romania. The longest trips I've been on were the ones I took to South America, closely followed by the one I took to Australia and New Zealand - after all, you can't just go to these places for a few days. To be honest, I'm not really that fond of those super long trips. On one hand, I remember when I got to Melbourne which was my last destination on that trip, I thought this is such a lovely city, I would love to spend a few more days here, then I realized I had already been on the road for nearly a month and I really had to get back to my life in London. To fill a period of at least a week, I would need to go to somewhere with plenty to see and do, that might involve visiting different parts of a country rather than staying in one place for a week. It could also be the kind of trip where I visit a few different countries. 

3. Visit country 77 - but where? 

I did well in 2023 in having visited three new countries: Serbia, Moldova and Transnistria. Okay, I know some of you would bitch about whether I should be allowed to include Transnistria in that list, but I have also included the Vatican City, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and Puerto Rico on that list as well - like where do you wanna draw the line? The easiest and cheapest countries for me to try to get to next are the ones left in Europe but there are so few: Cyprus and Kosovo are possibilities. With the war still raging on, visiting Belarus would be impossible and would probably be impossible for quite a few years. But let's see if I might be able to travel with work somewhere else. I would still like to visit Kazakhstan sometime in 2024, but that depends on when I finish my jury duty, as I want to go there in winter when there is still snow. 

4. Hit the minimum of 12 countries in 2024

I have reached that point in my life when I am making enough money whilst working only 10 to 15 hours a week on average - before the pandemic, I used to hit around 12 countries a year and that makes in an average of one country per month. It is nice to get back to that, I don't want to end up like one of those older people who may earn a lot of money but don't have the time to go on holidays and do the things they enjoy. I did just manage to hit 12 in 2023: Italy, Norway, Spain, Austria, Slovenia, Italy (again so it doesn't count), Croatia, Serbia, Denmark, Moldova, Transnistria, Romania, Italy (yet again, so I can't count it but damn I do love Italy so much) and France. If you don't consider Transnistria a proper country then I can also include the UK on that list as I did do a bit of domestic traveling within the UK this year. We'll see, I am now planning a quick break in early January before my jury duty starts but I don't dare to make any more plans beyond that. Once I've certainty about when my jury duty will finally end then I can start planning the second trip of 2024. 

5. Travel for work 

Ah this one is a bit out of my control but I have travelled to some incredible places for work before. With finance, I've travelled to places like Bangkok, Dubai, Brussels and Panama. As an actor, I've performed in Berlin, Istanbul, Prague and Budapest. Yeah I can afford to pay for my own travel of course but there's always a bit of a thrill to do it for work when the company is paying for everything. Sure I'm there to work rather than have a holiday, but what I would often do is extend the trip for a few days before and/or after the work commitments, so I could have some time there to have fun. 

6. Go visit a friend

This was one goal in 2023 that I failed to fulfil - I tried to make some plans but they all somehow fell apart as it usually involves both parties (ie. me and my friend) both being available at the same time. I have friends in Spain, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong I would like to visit in 2024 but again, that all depends on trying to coordinate everything and succeeding where I had failed this year; I can't begin to make any plans for this until I know when my jury duty will finish. 

7. Ski in a new country

My regular readers will know that I absolutely love skiing and have skied in a total of 22 countries on 5 continents so far - I have visited countries with ski resorts but haven't skied there such as Japan, Australia, America and Norway so this could be achieved either by visiting a brand new country that I have never visited before and skiing there (eg. Armenia, Uzbekistan, Mongolia or South Korea) or simply going to ski somewhere like Poland, Turkey, America or Iceland where I have already visited in the past, but haven't skied there yet. Skiing is such a great way to experience the mountains of a country and I will look forward to acquiring a whole new set of vocabulary in a different language associated with skiing. 

8. Learn a new language for a destination (one that I can't actually speak yet)

Part of the adventure of visiting a country on holiday is to learn a new language - I usually don't really need to do any revision if the language is within my top eight languages: English, French, Mandarin, Spanish, Welsh, Italian, Hokkien and German. Going beyond that, with languages 9 to 30, these are the languages which I have some knowledge of but could certainly do with some revision to refresh my memory. For example, when I visited Moldova this November, I revised my Romanian and Russian, the two languages occupy position 11th and 15th respectively. Given that I have good coverage across the Romance, Germanic, Slavic, Celtic and Sinitic languages, I'd like to go to a country where I would have to learn a new language that doesn't fall into any of those language families so I would be challenged in a different way in this department. For example, if I went to Kenya, then I would have to study Swahili for that trip and that is not amongst my top 30 languages - I feel like my holiday begins the moment I start learning that brand new language.

9. Try a new mode of transport

Now we all know the usual modes of transport: we can take a plane, train, tram, trolleybus, bus or rent a car. We could also cycle, skate, ski or simply walk. On water, we could take a ferry, a boat or even a submarine. The last two times I did something different was this summer when I went kayaking in Denmark and last November when I rode a camel in the UAE. Admittedly, I didn't cover long distances on either occasions, but still it was very fun to do something different. I'd like a new experience in this category, though quite frankly, I don't have anything in mind for now. I've been on an icebreaker in Finland, a Maglev train in China, a gondola in Venice, various forms of ski lifts and cable cars so I am going to need to find something very unusual to tick this box, so it might have to be something like a hovercraft or a helicopter.

10. Make a new friend whilst traveling

This happened this year and it was one of the most rewarding experiences. We met a young Italian university student whilst traveling from Chisinau to Tiraspol and it was great to meet someone else who is mad enough to want to go to Tiraspol in November - this is one of the most off the beaten track tourist destinations in the world and you would need to have a good knowledge of Soviet history to appreciate why Russian controlled Transnistria is so unusual. That usually doesn't happen when we are in big cities - let me give you an example, just a few days ago when we were taking the bus in Turin, an older British lady boarded the bus and tried to speak to the bus driver in English. The bus driver replied only in Italian and he couldn't/wouldn't speak to her in English - I was sitting near the front of the bus and so I decided to step in to try to help her translate, but she refused to accept my help. Perhaps there was this sense of, "I can figure this out, I am not a total idiot, I can understand a bit of Italian and all I want to do is buy a bus ticket, I really don't need anyone's help, this is not my first time in Italy and I'm going to be perfectly fine doing this my way." Admittedly, I did think, oh you stupid monolingual British woman, you are just going to hold up the bus by trying to speak English to the bus driver, let me help you get it sorted out so we can be our way quickly. But no, she refused my help and I thought, fine - I hope the next time you get lost in Italy, none of the locals will try to help you or speak English with you. Ironically, we did run into that very same woman again when we were sightseeing in Turin a day later but I decided to ignore her. I suppose making friends can really only happen in more unusual destinations or if you meet someone whom you share something special in common with. For example, when I was in Dubai last year, I met some Welsh tourists on the desert safari and once they realized I speak Welsh fluently, we immediately connected and spent a lot of time that day speaking to each other in Welsh. I think the main reason why these experiences are so remarkable is because they are totally spontaneous - I had no idea that Italian student was going to be on that mini-bus, or I would run into those Welsh-speaking tourists in Dubai. 

Okay guys, so that's it from me on this topic, once again, I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2024 with loads of opportunities to have wonderful holidays and create incredible memories with amazing people. We shall see how many out of these ten goals I manage to achieve in 2024. Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.