Musn't forget the painkillers

I'm leaving for Istanbul in two days and tried my rucksack on a few hours ago.

It's not heavy (I've taken out my three pairs of stilletos, hairdryer and giant makeup bag) but because of my bad back, I need to be a bit careful. Together with the normal junk that goes into a rucksack, I'll need to bring my regular dose of painkillers and muscle rub creams.

My feet are also flat, which essentially means that they have no arches like how all you normal people do. If you stand, you'll see a little space between your feet and the floor- now that's the space I wish I'd been born with.

There's a scientific term for flat feet (always makes one feel a little important, doesn't it, when there's a special term), which is pes planus, or fallen arches. Arches may not seem very important but what they do is that they cushion and protect your feet when you walk and distribute your weight evenly as you move. People with flat feet can't walk or run for too long otherwise their feet, knees and ankles will start to hurt.

Wonderful.

But never mind. It's nothing which a good Turkish massage can't sort out.

I wonder if I might have room for just one pair of three-inch heels.

Ditch that guidebook, grab something else!

Guidebooks like Lonely Planet, Frommer's and The Rough Guide are usually the first books you grab when you start planning a trip. And why not? When they come complete with suggested itineraries and packing lists, they clearly help you focus on what's important. What I like to do after I've more or less gotten an idea of what to do where, however, is to get rid of those guidebooks and look for other reading material.

If you're hoping to come away from your trips with a more all-rounded experience, have a look at travel literature or books related to the language, culture or history of the place you're going to. If you're going to India, for instance, have a look at Age of Kali and City of Djinns by Scottish writer William Dalrymple. Both are extremely well-written, with insights in the politics, history and social order of India.

In Age of Kali, Dalrymple writes about his travels around the subcontinent while City of Djinns focuses on Delhi. I love both, but Djinns stands out as being absolutely stunning, a work of art which peels away every possible layer of Delhi. When you read it, you'll see how the ending brings you right back to Delhi's origins, and therefore, the beginning. If the cover of a book is just as important as what's inside, look for the copies published by Flamingo like I did, which are illustrated by the writer's wife Olivia.

If you're visiting the US for the first time and interested in how American English developed- and trust me, there's a lot to be interested in here- I cannot recommend anything more than Bill Bryson's Made in America.....heck, just read it anyway, whether or not you're going to the US. Students of English literature will probably turn their noses up and say that it's not 'original English', but this a culture which gave us words like 'gas guzzler', 'G-string' (which had Native American origins), 'black market' and 'going haywire'. Hey, even the phrase 'keeping a stiff upper lip', is an Americanism.

Going to Tibet or China? Grab a copy of Ma Jian's Red Dust, which is banned in the author's own home country. It's impossible not to sympathise with Ma, who buys a one-way train ticket from Beijing after his marriage falls apart and spends the next three years walking and hitch-hiking his way through Tibet in search of himself. The result is essentially a travel memoir, but one which is highly political and painfully honest, yet disturbing and sad at the same time (he would determine his state of health from the colour and stream of his pee). Red Dust is beautifully written and also winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award 2002.

Let's talk about food

I live to eat. Who doesn't?

When you're on the road, (quite possibly) broke and starving, looking for a decent meal can either be a pleasure or drive you crazy. Meals always become more memorable when you're away, so this is a list of the worst and best stuff I've eaten on my travels:

1- Worst meal ever: 
Spaghetti bolognaise at a cafe in Rome. Not home-cooked but one of those processed instant meals sold in microwavable containers. Not only was it expensive and over-heated, it tasted absolutely foul and the waiter didn't even have the decency to serve it on a plate- it was left in its plastic container.

2- Best meals:

There've been so many so this is a long list:

- bagels and pumpkin soup in Christchurch, New Zealand, in winter

- chicken briyani at the Everest Club in Hong Kong- after pots and pots of instant noodles, this was the most amazing meal I'd had in days

- roast lamb in Dunedin, New Zealand - how can you NOT eat lamb in NZ?

- chettinad meen varuval (spicy fried fish) in Chennai, India

- the most juicy, succulent burgers ever at a roadside cafe in Sausalito, California, USA

- tuna kimchee noodles in Seoul, South Korea, at a restaurant in the Posco Building

3- Most memorable (for the right reasons): 

a) fried rice at a Thai restaurant in Christchurch: it was winter, I was starving and was dying for some rice. I found this little Thai place near my hostel by accident and I asked the lady to make the fried rice really hot. She said, 'White man hot or Asian hot?' and I said, 'Asian extra hot', and she laughed and went into the kitchen. The nasi goreng cili padi (chili fried rice) that she brought out ten minutes later was amazing.

b) dinner at the Muslim quarter, Xi'an, China: once again, it was winter. Sat by a roadside restaurant, ordered some shashlik (lamb kebabs) nd got chatted up by one of the guys working there. His English was bad and my Mandarin was crappy so I used my phrasebook most of the time. He ended up taking me on a tour of the city.

c) dinner at the Dead Fish Bar, Siem Reap. The green curry is excellent!

d) Ice-cream in Venice, Italy: we'd been walking for hours around the city, looking for this elusive gelato parlour which apparently had the best ice-cream in Venice. Just when I was ready to push my travel companion into the canal out of frustration, we turned a corner and there it was, this famous ice-cream place. We each ordered TEN scoops of various flavours, found a nice spot by the canal and finished our ice-cream in silence.

4- Most memorable (for the wrong reasons): 

Indomie (instant noodles) in Greymouth, New Zealand, about seven years ago: I'd booked into the Hairy Lemon Backpackers the night before (don't EVER stay there by the way, it's the worst place I've ever stayed at) and to my surprise, found Indomie at a convenience store. I bought the noodles immediately and dashed back to the Hairy Lemon.

I was stupid enough to book myself into a place which had a kitchen that was absolutely filthy, with a kettle that had rat droppings inside it, and because I was really really stupid, was too lazy to find another hotel. So what did I do? I went upstairs, avoided the chap at the stairs who was staring at me, went to my room and put the noodles into a bowl. I then filled the bowl with water and put the bowl, noodles and all, on top of the heater and waited for the water to get hot, in order to cook the aforementioned noodles.

I waited. And waited. And waited.

OF COURSE the water didn't boil, so what did I do? It was dark outside, there were strange men hanging around the lobby and I was starving. So I ate the noodles just like that, soaked in cold water. Dinner was eaten in silence.

I said goodbye to the Hairy Lemon and its scary kitchen and left Greymouth first thing in the morning.