Here's Why My Vacays Are Now Adventures
Adventuring sounds like I am doing something deep and meaningful, even if I am just going on hols and don't really have an excuse as to why!
I am nothing if not an absolute tart for a holiday! Naturally, now that I am older and still no wiser I like to call them adventures, not holidays, so it sounds like I am doing something wild and mindful instead of simply finding an excuse to go on a jolly!
That is, of course, exactly what it is though – a great big jolliest of jollies. I set off this year not to do Bucket List Things because ‘urghhh’ – what a way to make it sound like you have limited time left. Having a bucket list is a bit like being called the tribe elder. Sheila, I am not old enough to be an elder, good grief, nor dead enough to be penning a bucket list. But hot dang, did I Bucket List this year. And here’s why you should to!
Last year, I semi-inadvertently found myself at a Take That gig – the first of their reunion tour some 25-odd years after they first found fame and one another. And Robbie had left them to it. Despite the punks shooting a lot of embarrassing video footage of me singing along to every song and waving my hands in the air, yes, like I just didn’t care, I loved it. I might even have had my eyes closed as I sang. And this wasn’t even a band I particularly loved.
Imagine, thought I, if I got to see one of my Real Old Faves from back in the day. And the thought persisted and niggled and never went away. I’d forgotten just how much I love a proper, sweaty, dancey, sing-songy live concert. Back in the 90s and 00s, I never missed the chance to see a band live in concert. Paul Simon, INXS, Crowded House, Depeche Mode. These were canonical events to my South African self. So delicious were Depeche Mode that we went to all the dates they appeared when they performed in SA back in 1994.
It stood to reason then, that when Depeche Mode decided to embark on a 2024 world tour that this was defs on my newly-minted nostalgia list. Lo and behold, we got there! Thanks to a well-organised bestie who was game - but also on time and online as the tickets opened - we headed for Madrid to see our long-time bests of the 80s and 90s.
The idea started life as two of us, which quickly became four of us and ended as nine of us rolling into the Wizink Centre as the sun set behind the public art in Salvador Dali Square in Madrid in March this year. We’d feasted on paella and sangria, crammed ourselves as close to the stage as possible and we proceeded to sing loudly and raucously – with the occasional bout of tears too! – for hours.
There was a brief moment as lead singer - and resident 80s kohl-lined sex god - Dave Gahan first loped onto stage where you think ‘god he’s gotten old, like a very sexy vampire’, but as soon as he opens his mouth, you’re 16 all over again. He sounds the same, you feel the same. And you look around at all of your 50-odd-year-old besties and you might as well all be 16 again… With your whole life ahead of you, singing through the heartbreak of a boyfriend whose name you no longer even remember. But you remember Martin Gore’s lyrics.
It was profoundly wonderful, moving, brilliant experience! We were incandescent as we rolled out into the Spanish night. We found a tiny hole-in-the-wall bar near our hotel, ordered several bottles of Spanish red, because when you are 50 and not 16, you go out and drink delicious wine after a concert, rather than a tequila shooter or a stolen Bennies & Hennies before your parents fetch you.
By then, we’d quite literally bought the tee-shirts and we remained propped up in that small Spanish bar, all wearing the merch, drinking the wine and reminiscing for hours into the early morning. It was every reason in the world to have thrown caution to the wind and done it! That, and the endless supply of jamon Iberico. All I’ll say on this is: if you know, you know. Sublime beyond all reason.
Turns out that it was not just us who, this year, discovered the power of gig travel. Thanks to global tours from Taylor Swift, Pink, Coldplay and the gang, people all over the world were criss-crossing the globe to see musicians live in concert in far-flung destinations. Did they have as much fun as us? Well, probably, but it would have been very hard to beat.
In the build-up to Depeche Mode concert night, we explored the city collectively and separately in an easy, organic way that you can really only do when you a) have known one another for an age and b) are happy in your own company and c) don’t have any FOMO for what anyone else is doing and d) financially responsible enough to be let loose in Spanish shops unattended… aka you’re a grown up. And fork, it feels good to be a grown up. Because here’s the thing about Being A Grown Up – you rarely feel like you actually are one.
Of course, the moment we were back home – okay maybe long before that! – we had already started talking about where to next… I got in ahead of the game by finding an excuse to visit a bestie in Hong Kong. That in itself should have been the end of it – a great adventure in a great city with a great person. And one I haven’t visited in an age, so the catch-up agenda was lengthy!
A few short weeks before I arrived, she sent me a message that simply read: ‘how easy is it to get a Chinese visa on a South Africa passport?’ The answer, kids, it’s easy. The Chinese visa centre is fast and efficient, so I headed off to Hong Kong with a Chinese visa, but no major plan as to our plans. Adventure, right?
We caught a bullet train from Hong Kong to Yuangshuo, China. Why there? Well, there was a train and it wasn’t a city, which we agreed we didn’t want and it looked ancient and serene and incomparably gorgeous. From the second we stepped out of the station into the gummy, unexpectedly tropical heat of rural China, we didn’t see another Westerner, nor hear much of a word of English. Thank you Google Translate and e-sim cards. And what a magical, otherworldy adventure it turned out to be.
Yuangshuo is home to thousands of karst mountains, like sugarloaf mountains. There are so many that when you look out at the view, it is almost too difficult to count them all. Amongst the verdant green karst mountains meanders a fat ribbon of the Xi River and across the river is the village of Xipiang, which has been around since the year 200 AD. Think about that for a hot second. This tiny village, which is still standing and in full working order (soz Pilgrim’s Rest) has seen several centuries of dynastic changes, wars and welcomes. And now also: a Cotti Coffee, which is like Chinese Starbucks.
Of course we stopped for coffee!
We also hiked, we found fossils, we visited secret temples tucked away amongst the foliage of long-forgotten pathways. We caught the ancient ferry to this ever-more ancient village. We ate sensational - sometimes unidentifiable - food. We laughed and yapped and fed out souls with the generous company of the Chinese people who helped us along the way - our fantastic hosts at our family-run hotel.
They decoded menus, booked trips, fed and watered us, found us delicious coffee and snacks and even coerced an unsuspecting husband to chauffeur us back to the train station some 90 minutes away, so that we could stop en route to see more beautiful, natural wonders. Their idea, not ours! Oh, and coffee. The brief he was given was also to ensure we stopped at a good coffee truck. They clearly knew what we needed by then.
We made our way through this seemingly ancient world with such curiosity and it again reminded me that - yes, here we go again! - the older one gets, the less one is surprised by anything! Not jaded by things but unsurprised. You’ve seen a lot, you’ve lived through many places, experiences, people, so it is such a joy to be so completely bowled over by a new place and experience. Especially one so completely unexpected.
I see on Pinterest’s travel trends report that one of the big trends for the year ahead is ‘travel to mysterious places’. And without realising it as we set off, that’s exactly what we got - a wholly mysterious place.
I urge you to do something wildly out of your comfort zone if it’s on your cards for the year ahead. I promise that something as simple as an e-sim will take you far, even if your own bravery won’t. In fairness, our e-sims got us as far as having braised river eel for dinner. Yep, I know, ‘tis not that Google Translate is always entirely reliable. Poetic yes, reliable no. But would we have ordered it off the menu had we known? Probably not! So sometimes, the adventure is in the old schooliness of it all, whatever that might be.
Where should we go next?