Home Comforts That I Miss When Travelling

‘Sometimes, I’ll let little things get to me. Or I’ll make a big deal out of little things.’ – Jennette McCurdy.

My left side was aching. My knee was sore from being locked in the same position for too long. My hip screamed at me to turn over, to quit lying so still. I wanted to face the other way. Slowly, oh so carefully, I moved onto my back. So far so good. I shuffled my body over and the ancient metal bed springs screeched into life, creaking and groaning as they shifted under my weight, loud enough to wake the dead. I settled into my new position and sighed with relief as silence descended once more and peace reigned. It was 4am and as far as I could tell, none of the other four occupants in the room had been woken by the racket. Only me. I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep before I felt the need to move again and the whole process was repeated.

In the photos, the hostel had looked okay. A bit strange, perhaps, with its name ‘UFO Hostel’ and the paintings of said UFO’s dotted about on the walls, but none the less okay. And cheap too. Oh, how a wide-angle lens can lie!

The harsh reality was quite different. P and I stood in the doorway to the room and looked around. There wasn’t much to look at. Three bunk beds, all ancient, crammed into a space roughly the size of a large cupboard. At the end of one bed, a Formica table stood, littered with cosmetics, underwear and a wealth of other paraphernalia. The floor space (there wasn’t much) was covered with shoes, puddles of clothes and handbags. Three women were living in the room long-term and the three bottom bunks had been taken. We chose the two top bunks nearest the window and made do with the little space that remained to us.

It was hostels like this that made me really miss the comforts of home. Thankfully, we were actually pretty lucky with the majority of places that we stayed. This was an exception rather than a rule, and although it was the worst hostel I have ever stayed in, it did teach me one thing: always pay attention to the price rather than the photos when booking somewhere to stay!

Having my own space and a comfortable, quiet bed aren’t the only things that I miss when I’m travelling. Strangely, it’s the smaller, seemingly more insignificant things that I long for whilst on the road. Things that I would never normally think about until I’m living out of a backpack again and then I remember the last time…

When I’m travelling, I really miss the luxury of having two thick, large towels.
Obviously, I can’t fit two towels in my backpack. I travel with one thing, medium sized towel that I bought for $4 from a Countdown in Nelson when I lost my microfiber towel during my first month in New Zealand. It folds down nicely into a small net pouch and I squash this unceremoniously into the bottom of my backpack, sometimes still damp, until I reach the next destination and need to use it again.

Some of the places I’ve stayed in the past include towels in the room and those places always get great reviews from me! I love being able to step out of a shower and wrap my wet hair straight into a towel, before using a second, bigger towel to dry myself with. Having only one towel is a pain in the arse. Hostels should definitely provide free towels more to travellers. I bet I’m not the only one who misses having two when they’re on the road!

Whilst we are on showering, I’d like to say that I get genuinely annoyed about having to cart my toiletries to and from the shower each time I use them whilst travelling.
It’s something you would never even consider until you travel, but actually, being able to leave your array of shower gels, shampoos, conditioners, moisturisers, loafers, soaps and assorted bathroom products actually in the bathroom between use is just fantastic. They belong there! The bathroom is their domain.

You get into the habit of it, but wiping down dripping bottles after each use and packing them away again (all the while carrying a grain of concern in the back of your mind that they may leak everywhere and destroy the contents of your bag) is just a nuisance. It’s much nicer to leave them in the bathroom.

One final bathroom problem whilst on the road? The toilets!
Sometimes they’re non-existent and you spend hours crossing your legs. Sometimes they’re diabolically disgusting and unhygienic and I am one of those people who would prefer to hold it in than use a really gross toilet. Sometimes they’re a long-drop in a shed and it’s freezing outside and the last thing you want to do is pull your trousers down and pee. Sometimes they’re a hole in the ground half full of sloppy human shit with a plank over the top and I’m the sort of person who’d rather have a stomach ache for two whole days than use one of those types of loos, thanks very much. Sometimes it’s a go outside and squat jobby, where you run the risk of injury to your foot (me whilst drunk in Ghana, don’t ask), or sitting on a tick (me in some woods in Mongolia) or peeing on your foot (thankfully I don’t think I’ve ever actually done this). Sometimes you might accidentally use a blocked toilet unawares and have the embarrassment of not being able to flush it properly (me in quite a nice upmarket café in Puerto Princesa in the Philippines). Basically, toilets around the world can be pretty grim. And when they’re grim, I really, really, really miss going to the toilet at home!

I also really hate using travel plugs.
I have a great adapter. Honestly, it’s maybe the best $30 I’ve ever spent. It adapts to pretty much any plug in the world and there’s even a USB socket so that I can charge my phone separately if I’d like to. It even accepts my rather dodgy camera charger set up.

But after a while, I really kind of miss just being able to plug into a socket using my usual British plugs. Despite my great adapter, I find that foreign plug sockets leave a lot wanting. Sometimes they don’t leave enough space for cables to hang down. Sometimes there’s not enough space for my adapter to fit properly. Sometimes the pins are loose in the socket and the adapter falls out under its own weight (which is ridiculous!). And there’s obviously the problems surrounding voltage – my laptop and phone batteries are definitely worse off from plugging into sockets of varying voltage. So yeah, it seems really trivial. But being able to just use my British plugs normally again is great.

And finally… I really, really miss cooking for myself.
This might be the daftest one of the lot, but honestly, I really miss cooking when I’m travelling. Quite often, depending on the country you’re in, it’s cheaper just to go out and buy takeaway food or eat in a restaurant or café, rather than to buy the ingredients and cook for yourself. More convenient too – you don’t need to lug around ingredients or get your hands dirty in the kitchen when you could be out exploring a new city. And quite often, unless you specifically look for it, places just don’t have cooking facilities.

But I love cooking. Like, really enjoy it. And I’m a vegetarian too, so cooking for myself makes life a little easier (I don’t have to try and decipher to menu to work out what I’m ordering – I can just browse the shops and pick up my own ingredients). So I miss cooking when I’m travelling. So much so that it drove me to be slightly more proactive about getting places with kitchens during our travels in Russia and Europe and I told P more than once to just chill out and leave me to cook on my own on the evenings when we didn’t eat out.

But even when I did cook, I missed having my usual ‘go-to’ ingredients at hand – garlic, oil, salt and pepper, butter, onions… This is all basic stuff but you’d be surprised how hard it can be to find these things, especially in deepest darkest Siberia. I had to think outside the box to produce food that tasted good with what ingredients we could find. And carrying ingredients around gets a bit annoying as well.

In short, travelling and cooking for yourself just aren’t always a great combination. And it’s one of the greatest things about being home again – knowing where the utensils are in the drawers and cupboards, having a good sharp knife at hand, not having to lug heavy bottles of oil around from place to place… Bliss.

I probably sound like a moany, ungrateful cow.
I really don’t mean to sound like that though. I love travel. I love the fresh experiences it brings, the new perspectives, the changes that come with each day. I love the larger aspects of travel, the bigger things, the things that matter, like meeting new people and experiencing new cultures and having amazing moments and making memories to last a lifetime.

These things that I mention are petty, minor parts of life on the road and as much as I embrace a clean toilet, the use of two towels and my own kitchen when I’m at home, I’d give them all up in a heartbeat to get out there, off again, adventuring. These things pale into insignificance when compared to the things I miss about travel when I’m at home.

In a bid to visit some more new countries this year, and keep exploring, I’ve got some minor travel plans shaping up for October, November and December… Nothing is fixed in place yet, but I’ll keep you posted! And I promise I’ll try not to moan too much about having to crack out the travel plug again…

NB: I wasn’t really sure what pictures to use to illustrate this blog, so settled on some of my favourites from the past couple of years… You’ve probably seen them all before but they’re worth repeating!