All posts tagged: recovering humanitarian

5 Top Tips for Keeping Fit on the Road

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  Travel: It’s good for the soul but not always for the waistline. If you’re travelling medium to long term, you need to figure out realistic ways of staying fit on the road. Here are my top tips! #1 Let it go (just a little) First things first: don’t stress about it too much. If you’re on an amazing travel adventure, that should be your primary focus! Travel is unpredictable and you need to accept this means you may not be at your absolute fittest. But the amazing experiences you’ll have along the way should more than compensate! You’re out of your normal routine, moving around constantly and you don’t always know where you’ll be so there’s no way you can plan to fit in five full workout sessions a week. You’re going to have to adjust and fit them in when you can, if you can.Try to relax about it and be content with keeping a base level of fitness, even if it’s not your personal best! #2 Location, Location, Location I found that when …

Moving to Muscat? Top 10 things you need to know

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You’ve accepted a job in Muscat, the capital of Oman. You’ve looked it up on the map after realising you only had the vaguest notion of where it actually is. You can now confidently describe its geographical positioning  and are getting a little sick of people quoting Chandler from Friends at you ‘You’re going to Yemen?!’ Here’s some tips and hints about life in Muscat, a mix of the practical and ‘you really should know this if you live here’. #1 It’s not Dubai You know this of course- you looked it up, remember?- but I mean in more than just the literal sense. You won’t find skyscrapers and malls with ski slopes in Muscat; Oman is more traditional than its Emirati neighbours and has made a concentrated effort to preserve its own culture while modernising. Although sometimes you may curse the poor selection of restaurants and bars when compared to Dubai or Abu Dhabi, I always found that on balance, I much preferred living somewhere that has still retained its own culture. Muscat has …

14 weeks, 5 countries, 2 continents: My Flashpacking adventure

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Flash-What? Flashpacking! It’s backpacking but fancier. A new travel term coined for millenials who mix high and low end experiences to create a more authentic way of travelling. The Numbers 14 weeks, 5 countries, 2 continents, 13 flights, 11 buses, 8 ferries, 7 cities, 3 beach towns, 2 islands, 1 yoga retreat The Route Dublin- Abu Dhabi – Hanoi – Halong Bay – Sapa – Hoi An – An Bang – Ho Chi Minh –  Phnom Penh – Sihanoukville – Siem Reap –  Bangkok – Krabi – Railey – Koh Lanta – Ao Nang – Phi Phi – Bangkok – Brisbane – Shannon The Highlights Brisbane, Australia I went to Australia solely to see my brother Rory, his beautiful girlfriend Rachael and meet their almost 2 year old son, my nephew Lachie. It’s not that I didn’t want to explore the country but budget/time wise, it wasn’t realistic so this was a ten day, Christmas/family visit to finish off my trip. After almost 13 straight weeks of solo travelling and all the planning, organising and …

Plot Twist or F**k Up? Thanks, 2015!

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The only thing we know for sure is that things will always change. Nothing is permanent. And when we find ourselves in the middle of trauma, in the middle of crisis, even when you’ve hit rock bottom and you have no idea how on earth you’ll ever find the courage to climb back up, you are still okay. You are okay. Rachel Brathen, Yoga Girl I had a rough year. That doesn’t mean it was all bad of course; there were many amazing things. I traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Bali, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Australia. I began practising yoga and after years of intermittent exercising, finally built up a proper fitness habit where I felt consistently healthy and fit. I even had visible abs for a small while early in the year (far too difficult to maintain but I’ll live off those few months forever!) I read good books, drank good wine, cooked good food for myself, for family and for friends. I danced and drank and ran on beaches and stayed in five star …

Nomad/Wanderer/Emigrant? On being Irish Abroad

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Why don’t you live in Ireland? It’s a straight forward question that isn’t easy to answer. Like most people, I have a somewhat complicated relationship with the place I’m from. Not quite love/hate, more can’t live there but would like to be there slightly more often. I enjoy telling people how great a place to visit Ireland is- weather aside of course. The culture, the landscape, the craic. There’s history, music, food, drink and fun. Beautiful countryside, great hiking, world class surfing. Drive the Wild Atlantic Way!  And it’s true, Irish people really are friendly.   But no, I don’t want to live there. When I travel, people sometimes nod knowingly and mention the recession. But I didn’t leave Ireland for economic reasons. I’m that curious thing, an emigrant by choice. Which is a privilege, I’m aware. Years of economic mismanagement, political corruption and bad governance led Ireland into a devastating recession in 2008. Political policies in the following years did nothing to protect young people and their employment prospects. Successive governments protected pay and …

Your Life Is Ridiculous: Thoughts On Being a Modern Nomad

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Your life is ridiculous, a friend messaged me after I emailed him from Thailand, en route to Australia, to organise having lunch in London in a few weeks time before I leave for Colombia. I’ve lived in Ireland, London, Uganda, Oman and quite soon, Colombia. I’ve visited over 25 countries and (once I touch down on Colombian soil) every continent except Antarctica- though I plan on seeing that before I’m 30! #lifegoals. So it’s fair to say I like to move around. I always wanted to travel. I can’t pinpoint the orgin of my wanderlust exactly but when I try, I come up with a hazy mix of being raised in a rural Irish village and devouring books and newspapers about what was going on in other places. My sisters subscription to Time magazine surely helped, with it’s articles about West Africa and South America. My Dad’s daily newspaper buying habit too; I remember at 15 almost obsessively following the Israel-Lebanon war during the summer of 2006; We didn’t have Wifi or Sky TV so …

Red Sky At Night

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I like to travel alone. I enjoy the freedom of it. I enjoy the new and unpredictable experiences you have by venturing into the world by yourself. I enjoy meeting people along the way. People who travel alone are rarely ever on their own of course. You make fast and firm friends when travelling; it’s normal after chatting for a mere two minutes to ask someone to dinner. Real world rules don’t apply here. Occasionally though, I do feel lonely when travelling. It usually happens right after I’ve made some excellent travelling friends. Maybe we spent a week on a Thai island or a few days on a Vietnam beach together. But then people go their own way and that sudden aloneness again is always jarring. It usually only lasts an afternoon or so but still, it’s a readjustment of sorts. It happened to me when leaving Koh Lanta, off Thailand’s Andaman coast. I had spent six days on the island, with a loose collection of solo travellers who all hit it off. We walked …

What the Flashpack! Where to Stay in Ubud and Saigon

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I’m currently flashpacking in SouthEast Asia, hashtagging my way around Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Flash- what? Flashpacking. There’s no one agreed definition but a good summation: backpacking but fancier. Flashpackers tend to be in their twenties or thirties, quite attached to their gadgets, willing to slum it but also liking their their little touch of luxe every now and then. I view flashpacking as mixing high and low end experiences to create a more engaging, authentic travel experience. You might stay in a super cheap, fun hostel one night and party with an international crowd; then you might splash out and spend the next three days at a yoga retreat with an infinity pool. That’s flashpacking at its finest. It’s backpacking for grown ups. A lot of places are tapping into the flashpacking market by providing more upmarket versions of hostels with extra touches and often co-working spaces. I visited Malaysia and Bali earlier this year also and came across some great places to stay. Here are the two best flashpacker pads I’ve encountered so far! …

You live in Oman?!

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  ‘Where?’ is usually the response to ‘I live in Oman,’ or ‘Ooh, how exciting, what’s Jordan like?’ ‘Not Amman. Oh-man.’ Of course, some people give up the good fight and just tell people they live in Dubai. Everyone knows Dubai. I couldn’t possibly. I used to describe Oman, quite specifically as being ‘South of Saudi, beside Yemen; at the Eastern tip of the Arabian peninsula.’ ‘Oh. So quite close to Dubai then?’ Which it is, of course. I didn’t know very much about Oman when I accepted a teaching job there. In fact, that was part of what attracted me to the position in the first place. Now, having left after spending two years in the capital Muscat, the Omani Tourism Board should pay me for the sheer raving I do about the place. ‘Of course it’s safe! It’s actually safer than Dubai really, Omani’s are very welcoming towards Westerners and pretty liberal. No I never had to cover! We have everything you have at home- Starbucks, Zara. Yes we have pubs. And beaches!’ …