Travelling Travails - the prologue

After a couple of months of people wondering if I'm going to be perenially just 'bereft' and nothing else, I return to my blog in a flurry of pre-travel activity, organising little frustrating details that insist on going wrong and ruining that big rosy picture in your head. The kind that leaps up from Vogue Travel and such-like, replete with jet-setting Ralph Lauren travel kits and L'Occitane aromatherapy air-mists.

The reality is more about yelling at your travel agent for failing to understand the minutiae of visa-acquisition and listening to an automated voice on the phone at Malaysia Airlines educating you on the advantages of Enrich points ad-infinitum.

And doing 12-hour work shifts in between.

It's a little hard to envision the final destination when in this quagmire - a brief return to the nation I was born in, followed by a much-anticipated, much-planned, a little scary trip up to Myanmar ( a name nobody here recognises unless you whisper 'Burma' conspiratorially ) to experience, evaluate, and dare I say it - perhaps understand - what it was like for my maternal grandmother, when she lived as a little schoolgirl in Rangoon of old.

I hardly trust myself in these trips back home, since all the great self-made promises of remaining calm and breezy and most of all, adult, during my trip almost instantly vapourises at the sight of friends, family, heck, even buildings and smells and language. I'm a mess when I arrive, and a mess when I leave.

So when it comes to this trip up to Yangdon ( Rangoon! ) - and with my mother no less, wanting to explore her own mother - I field awed gasps from Brisbane-white Aussies with serene cool, and silently quake in my Jacqui-e heels.

I'm endeavouring to set up Mobile Blogging as we speak - though that's not confirmed - and will be texting my experiences as and when they happen. Instant images are out of the question ( very sadly ) since they're yet to be supported by non-American mobile providers, but then I've relied more on my words to paint my stories anyway. Something that might change next year if my duty-free shopping this time goes according to plan.

So buckle up my honeys, it's gonna be one crazy ride for me. Pray I get back in one piece, but really, don't expect much sanity in the forthcoming weeks.