How Deep Will the Next Hole Go?

Deeply frustrating time with travel insurers.

Some of the countries I'm going to have appeared on the FCO's warning list - two on the 'we advise against all but essential travel to' list, and two on the 'do not go there' list.

So I rang my insurers to check how or if this changes the status or details of my two year 'worldwide' policy.

Chap 1 says yes, I can't go to any of these places. If I do, I'm not only uninsured, but it invalidates my whole insurance policy, and they won't pay out on any claim whatsoever.He offers to cancel my insurance.

I ask to speak to Head Office.

Chap 2 says no, it depends upon where in these countries I'm going. Indonesia, for example - Borneo is a completely different landmass to Bali, and things may be very different there. He checks the wording of my policy, and starts asking where in each country I want to visit. He's actually slightly rational - although he doesn't check that what I'm saying about the FCO list is correct (it was slightly out of date - Malaysia isn't on their list anymore, India now is).

I get cut off.

Chapess 3 says yes, I can't go to any of these countries. If I do, all the insurance is cancelled, whether I claim or not. If I get sick in France, they won't pay out if they have any suspicion that I have in the entire insurance period travelled to any of the countries on the FCO list.
No, Chapess 3 asssures me, Chap 2 could not have said that, he doesn't work there, nobody male works the travel desk. (thinks: but ....)
I ask her if I'm insured for cancelling or amending the flights I've already bought to Thailand. No. They won't pay out for that either.
What if I accidentally travel to a country I didn't realise was on the list? No. If I unwittingly cross their invisible line, my insurance is invalid.
She offers to cancel my insurance.

So I rang the travel agents. Why sell me flight tickets that I cannot be insured for?

Chap 4 says that's just crap insurance you have there, cancel it. Since when was Indonesia on the list anyway? He's just come back from Thailand himself.
No, I assure him, Indonesia's definitely on the list.
Is it? says Chap 4. I ask him to check for me whether these countries are on the FCO list. He asks the person at the next desk - I can hear him do it. This is hardly what I meant by check. Nah, nah, nah mate, they've never heard of this stuff either.Well, then I'll check.
But in theory, if I wanted to change my plans because the government has advised against all travel to any one country, what would your response be? It depends on the individual airlines. They would contact them to see if the airline has made a policy decision on travel to that country. Whether you can change depends upon whether that airline has responded by cutting the flights.
What you wanna do, he says, is cancel that insurance, and take out insurance with us instead.

I'm feeling so safe in these guys' care. They sound just the sort of capable types upon whom I want my comatose body's safety to depend in an emergency.

So now, I have to check with the FCO again, get my story completely straight, check the wording of my policy, get all this shit in writing, rather than anonymous offhanded contradictory comments from a bunch of guys working the switchboard.

I absolutely have the time and the energy and the patience to do this.

I check the FCO website again. They advise against all travel to parts of India and Indonesia. They advise against all but essential travel to parts of Thailand.

I hadn't noticed before that India was on there. And now Malaysia isn't even on their bloody list anymore. None of the guys who I spoke to even noticed these errors on my part.

Don't you just hate rabbit holes? Don't you just shiver at the thought that these idiots could be in charge of something with meaning or power over anybody else? Don't you just freeze at the thought of having to find out how deep their own personal vortex of misinformation might go?

Spot the inconsistency ...

"Man beheaded in front of teashop customers in southern Thailand
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - A man was beheaded in front of customers at a teashop Wednesday, in the latest apparent attack by Islamic separatists in Thailand's Muslim-dominated south." < rest >

"Bargains galore for off-peak travellers to Thailand
BANGKOK, 23 June (TNA) – Thailand’s government has launched a major campaign to attract more tourists to the country's southern coastal resorts during the low season." < rest >

update

1. 50% off sale at Kathmandu! I pretty much bought the shop. They pressed every gadget button I possess. Ask me to show you my pen knife. Go on. Ask me.

2. I spent hundreds of pounds on new glasses and new lenses. I haggled, accidentally, by being rather crap, umming and ahhhing and changing my mind. I thoroughly recommend doing that on purpose, rather than out of tired exasperation, because the price dropped three times when I did so. Still cost me six hundred smackers though.
It occurs to me that spending too much money too fast is very easy. People make it very easy. They will continue to do so, without my especial effort in any way. (Quote: 'do you want frames with diamonds on, or gold logos?')

3. The dental surgery is becoming really long, really drawn out and really painful. I don't very much appreciate having teeth destroyed and then being asked if I want a crap repair for a few hundred, or a lasting repair for a few thousand pounds. Right after the optician thing, it felt like a miniaturised version of 'man in front of you wants to scare you into paying him £2500. Will you do it? Will you tell him to piss off?'
Wonder how many times in the next few years it will take for me to learn to tell him to piss off. My money won't last long at this rate.
I trust the guy doing the dental work, but every visit leads to a tripling of the bill at present.
My mouth hurts like fucking-billy-oh right now, and will do for another two weeks, till the next two hours of surgery. And it makes eating unpleasant. Life was made for the enjoyment of pleasures such as eating. This is not a good thing.

4. I checked out the garage at my parents' house, and helped clear out all of S--'s old stuff (that I swear I had permission to throw out). Cleared a third of the garage out, and it looks like all my stuff will fit in there without too much problem. S-- offered to help me move it, and C-- suggested paying some of my underemployed ex-students to help move stuff as well. What I need now is to decide on a potential sum which will guarantee P-- and T-- actually turn up to help if they say they will, though. Two days before I go is pretty late to be let down.

It's less than a month now. My next priority is getting someone to take my animals. And calming down. The panic levels are quite irrational by now.

That's My Secret

I just spent wayyyyyyyyy too many hours trying every shop in central London that ever sold easy to crumple, easy to pack, stain resistant, one zip and they turn into shorts type trousers, only to find i-am-wrong, and ALL WOMEN HAVE 31 INCH LEGS.

No really.

I'm deluded when they don't fit.

It's my fault, not theirs.

The imbecility is getting to me.

Vanessa says:
I just discovered spray on skin
Vanessa says:
spray on SKIN
Vanessa says:
it's fookin ace fun
Vanessa says:
shit at doing what it's sposed to, but if you like giving your arms dandruff its ace
Creepy Lesbo says:
spray on skin? is that to stop bleeding and cuts etc?
Vanessa says:
yeah
Creepy Lesbo says:
I see.
Vanessa says:
ACE
Vanessa says:
sorry, i think travel preparations are driving me insane

Edit: Last week's Stupid Bloody Nurse was right. I don't need any malarials. None of the countries I'm going to this year require them. Duh.

tick tock ... tick

Things that drain you:

1. Dental invasion. Two and a half hours under the drill. After 75 minutes, the dentist leant back and said "Ah. That's done." I was ready to weep real tears of gratitude, when he continued, "Now to do the really difficult one."
More hours of crunching jaw growlers next week.

2. Trying to get refunds from Ellis-Brigham, deniers of the refund, and also the worst camping gear shop in the known universe.
I was feeling a tad guilty for having fired off angry letters of complaint to head office, but that dissipated fast.
Responses from staff included, "I'd take a credit note if I were you, and stand outside the store trying to flog it," to "You've got no chance mate, the only people I've ever seen get a refund got it by going absolutely mental. Course you could try it," to "Why not take a credit note and flog it to your friends?" to "Nah, never accept the credit note. Head office sees that as accepting defeat."
Continually, as I steadily wore them down with my true method of standing still and speaking very quietly even though you want me to go away.
The situation only changed by chance - one manager saying, "hold on, are you the person who writes the letters? Oh, here you go then. Here's your refund."
£300 back in my pocket. Wankers.

3. NHS nurses who respond to questions about which anti-malarials to take with the line "wait till you get there, then see what the locals take, and you'll be fine."
Scuse me, but don't anti-malarials need to bed down for a fortnight before you offer your thin pasty skin up for the biting?

4. People. People people people. The most draining fucking conversations on the planet. The most saddening, tedious, belittling conversations. The beigeness of it all, the feeling that you're a cipher for how someone else wants you to be. And the disappointment when you realise that by standing there and being their 'other' you're playing their game.
Cancelled my leaving party, gave up returning calls, and the minute I stop running around energising others' fears, a weight lifts. Bingo.

5. I still have nowhere to put my cats or my belongings. My family have offered a damp garage. If I buy a groundsheet, will that keep my photos safe for three years?

6. Blogs. Sick of the showmanship.

But ... there's a hard deadline here. Whether I do it well, whether I do it badly, it's four weeks to go. At some point, I'll be here, and these things will be behind me.

"Since you're here, why not take an hour or so to do some "wave supervision". Simply sit on the beach and direct the surf. Make sure each wave is breaking exactly as you dictate. It takes a while to get the hang of this, so don't be disappointed if your first duty shift is not a total success. You may need to come back tomorrow for more practice."

tick tock

caterpillar boots

I've discovered that when I visit outdoorsy / mountain climbing / rugged types' equipment shops, I have a tolerance zone of fifty minutes precisely.

This never varies.

Med'sin

rupees

The first time I went overseas for any period of time, I took me a little travel first aid pack. Beyond plasters, the only time I needed anything medical was when a companion sliced his toe in two on a metal grating. Plasters were a wee bit useless.
Especially when it got infected, later, and went green.
What was most useful was a passing Egyptian with an unopened bottle of perfume who thought fast, and poured it ont the open wound, provoking much screaming and yelling, to the degree she ran off apologising, having just - probably - saved my friend's foot from amputation.

So. Necessities only. I did like the sign next to the backpaks in the YHA shop - first pack your bag. Then wear it out around your neighbourhood for four hours or so. Now go home, unpack, and think again.
For a start, a tupperware box the size of a small sausage roll should do for casing.
Things F-- has said should go into my first aid pack:

1. plasters
2. soluble aspirin, soluble paracetamol (both)
3. glasses prescription, with a copy left online in web-based email account
4. spray skin stuff for burns
5. betadine (iodine stuff)
6. blister kit
7. immodium
8. tweezers & scissors
9. sewing kit
10. earplugs
11. HC45 (is that for bites?)cream
12. eyemask
13. antiseptic cream
14. iodine
15. antiseptic wipes
16. bandage

Still sounds like quite a lot of things to me.... ?

Do Not Go There

A stray comment over there about a war in Nepal I didn't know anything of sent me to the Foreign Office website, to see what the status of these countries is. "Cancel all but essential travel" is the tidemark for tour operators to pull out, and Thailand fits this category right now, and India / Malaysia are a whisper away.

Indonesia goes one better, it's in their "Do not go there" list.

Response: I logged into the FCO to get emailed updates of any status changes for any of the countries I'm going to in the first six months, and logged onto google weekly alerts for news of these regions, so at least I'm better informed.

Question: if I go anyway, does that invalidate my travel insurance?

Confirmation

Call me stupid if you like, but I only this week realised a very very VERY fucking simple thing.

When you book accommodation somewhere, especially if you do it through a third party: trawl google for an alternative email address for the hotel / hostel, then write to them confirming the booking, giving your flight number and arrival time.

That, today, saved me so many headaches in countries where I'm disembarking from an hours long flight.
Lady in the Cook Islands wrote back to say she'd pick me up from the airport.
Girl in Auckland wrote back to say the IYHF were being dickheads, of course I could change dates without a cancellation fee.
Chap in Singapore wrote back to say they're not open at 8am - not for an other six hours, sorry - but he'd open up specially to let me store my pack if I was stuck.
Receptionist in Vietnam sent me details of the only taxi service who wouldn't try to aggressively 'persuade' me to go somewhere else.
Edit: And just now, hotel owner emails again, with apologies for the rudeness of the receptionist; may I allow them to pick me up at the airport at my convenience?

And this site, this site is good. Scrolling way way way down pages topped by bland advertisements, I find realistic reviews of places, accommodation, tranportation, tourist traps and scams, and unexpected finds; all for places ignored by most of the Rough Guide / Lonely Planet hegemony.

Typhilitic Cuntymints

So now I have learnt an important lesson: make bloody certain sure that you're not coming down with flu on the day you have all your travel jabs.

Unfortunately, I didn't think of such things, thought the fact I was actively losing vocabulary and thought processes in front of the damn nurse was mere hayfever. Because I'm a fucking dickhead.

I just spent two days sleeping through fevers 18 hours daily, the rest gargling vitamins, cooking up brazilian beefsteaks the size of my face, and sitting in a pool of my own fetid sweat, willing my macrophages to win the war against both flu bugs and typhoid.

All the while expelling so much stuff from my bloodied nostrils that I swear there were fucking brains in it.

Not pleasant. Not not not not not not pleasant. My right arm didn't uncoil from the curled rigor mortis spasm of typhoid jab for twenty four hours solid. You try wiping your fucking arse with a rigid claw.
Today's the first point I've been able to wash or dress, and after four hours of letter writing I have to brave an expedition to buy tissues and milk now (how am I going to cope when I can't whinge on to the internet about My Hard Life?), and I'm already more than fit for another eighteen hour stint in the stinking pit of duvet.

For the sake of record, I have to write up my immunisations: typhoid nurse (favourite journey: Manaus and the amazon) recommended I purchase a filofax. Pah. Paper is so twentieth century. Ignore this bit, each one hurt, so it's not nice:

1989 - Tetanus, Typhoid, Polio, Hepatitis A
3.1998 - Polio, Hepatitis A, Typhoid, Yellow Fever (valid to 2008)
6.2005 - Typhoid (valid to 2007)
Tetanus due again Feb 2006
[Malaysia peninsula & sarok + Indonesia west papa & lombok require stronger anti malarials than elsewhere]

Things are not proceeding well: you could help out, though, by giving me some advice, on those links on the right hand side ... =====>

Confound it

My car's written off and has a paltry resale scrap value of £1700.

Hayfever purges of nostrils kept me awake all night.

I can't get into central London to sort out refunds from Ellis Brigham for days and days.

I'm fucking shattered.

I have to get tetanus, typhoid, hep A, polio jabs tonight.

And dental surgery next Wednesday.

Pissed off at the world.

Updates

What's been happening, as brief as I can make it: I paid an arm and a leg to get a second, private dentist's opinion about my crippling toothache (£400 and it can be sorted within a fortnight).

I crashed my car, totalled it, I believe, alongside my dignity. Just after I sold it to S--. Damn. The garage it got towed to lost if several times over (in their bloody own backyard), so no joy on finding out if I get scrap value reimbursed.

Lost my spectacles. Now there's only the pair I slept in left - the ones the optician said would probably last nine more days back in February.

S-- said she didn't need any of the stuff she's stored for five years in P--'s garage, and that I can chuck it all out if I like. P-- didn't sound so optimistic; pointed out that place is suffused with damp. So still without a place to store my stuff for three years.

F-- travelled from the next country along to come stand next to me offering advice while I spunked nearly five hundred: on a backpack (Loewe Alpine), a sleeping bag (1.2kg), trainers (North Face; extra cushioned heel, cos I'll be pounding pavements more than mud), torches (on elastic), cotton sack liner (cooler than silk), travel towel (ugly green and lovely; have a thing about old towels, me), iodine tablets (ew), mozzie spray (ew), and gave me lots of advice about socks.

The store I wanted to get stuff from had a clueless Saturday boy in, so I felt totally underconfident about buying there, and went elsewhere instead - where they overcharged me by £85, necessitating another spree. D-- and F-- disagreed somewhat vehemently about safety versus lightness of load.

Got a wire plastic combi padlock and the extremely urgently necessary offer of advice about financial stuff and equipment stuff and safety stuff from D-- when I go back to get my card refunded. And even more advice about socks.

E-- suggested I'm drowning in advice; need to ignore everyone and do what I damn well like.

Not true.

I need advice. Without advice I make serious-consequence mistakes.

I'm asking you now to step up with any advice. I will use it.

Had enormous nightmares about everyone I know being hacked into pieces. Woke up to discover I'd gone to bed in a basement flat with the front door open, all windows open, and a £2k tax refund cheque on the table. And I wonder about the imaginary threats...

Project Advice

Excuse me awhile - I'm trying to keep online copies of everything (every PC I own goes belly up, so keeping important stuff online becomes more crucial).

Online Project Advice begins... set up separate posts for each country I'm going to, and ask readers here to write down any great bars / places / hotels / restaurants / guides, etc they know of.

Which might whack a few things off the main page, but hell... Unless I stuff them into the archives. Oh, good idea.

Vagabonding

Thanks, Jen. I enjoyed it.

Interest deficit

You'd think, when you ring HSBC and ask them if you can give them £45K to invest, that they'd ring you back in under a week, wouldn't you?

J-- is horrified that the money I made in March is still sat in a current account, losing me £5 a day in lost interest.

I wanted to be able to be cuddled in the comfy expertise of others paid to Know More Than Me about what to do with the stuff, but as Shanaz at HSBC doesn't fucking want my money, then I'm faced with the awful prospect of actually doing some of my own research.

Shit-sticks.

I 'found' (or rather, J-- did) numerous savings accounts that all sound pretty much the bloody same, then found the best rate reserved for people drawing non-means-tested state benefit for their kids, ridiculously enough.

Deliberately losing interest, now.

misadventure

I thought I had passed the Frozen By Fear stage of planning (the one where I have constant nightmares about being murdered, and where people's more hair-raising scrape stories make my breath halt and my toes curl for days) and was reaching Thrilled And Excited once more.
Then I crashed my car. Bones intact, dignity shattered. Moreso because I crash so many of them, and knew what to do. Spent the first five minutes in a crouch position, waiting for my head to stop shrieking at the impact. Knew what to do, to a worrying degree.

Meeting my own schadenfreude on the way back.

In one (long deliciously lost and uncontrolled) weekend, I lost my bank cards ("Where did you lose them madame?" "I'm afraid I don't know. Somewhere in London." "Good night, was it, madam?" "You could say that."), my jaw developed crippling levels of tooth ache (I paid for a restaurant meal and then COULDN'T EAT IT. Seriously out of character, and costing me half a grand to set right), and totally destroyed the car I sold to my sister for a quid.

I'm so the independent practical minded jetsetter.

Hope she doesn't want the quid back.