Travelling Light: Thinking More About It

By Grant Cheyne

Travelling Light : thinking more about it, is a playful and informative short essay on the art of travel.
It is written to inspire both first time and experienced travellers to leave home behind and set out and travel in an effortless and self-perpetuating manner.
It may also serve as a hint to a friend in need......
Carrying a small amount of luggage is a consequence of prolonged, frequent travel. This attitude to ‘stuff’ and the spirit of travel becomes an inseparable part of day to day life.
The worlds of work and play merge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grant Cheyne
• Release date: Oct 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301481941

Grant Cheyne

Grant Cheyne was born in Adelaide Australia in 1960, the same year that television came to town. He lived a typical and content suburban life on the northern fringe of the city before pursuing an education in Architecture at The University of Adelaide. Mid-way through the five year course he decided to purchase a one way plane ticket to London and there was no going back. He currently lives in Sydney although all his belongings are in storage and complete strangers live in the home he purchased less that a year earlier. After frequent encouragement he now downloads his particular view of the world one of his close friends describes as `Planet Grant`. The book "Travelling Light : thinking more about it", was conceived in Chicago, outlined in Melbourne and written in the cafes (with very uncomfortable seats) of Hanoi and Koh Chang, in a very tiny notebook.

Book preview

Travelling Light : Thinking More About It

by Grant Cheyne

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Grant Cheyne

Travelling Light

Thinking More About It

Grant Cheyne

It’s economical to stay at home.

It’s enriching to travel

Table of Contents

Dedication

Part I Shedding Baggage

Part II The Lightweight Traveller

Part III Bringing Travel Home

Light Reading

About the Author

Dedication

To my parents who permitted me to go my way, Ken Welsh, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europe which changed my idea of travel forever and the wandering souls of Lonely Planet for helping folk like me travel independently.

Part I Shedding Baggage

Believe this!

Arriving in Xiamen after a marathon minibus trip from Hong Kong was a surreal experience. It was four in the morning, warm and foggy, bicycle bells could be faintly heard in the distance as I headed to my hotel in a cycle cab. That was March 1986 and although a memorable moment it was no comparison to what was about to happen.

Thinking twice about yet another epic bus journey, I opted to continue to Shanghai by boat. This had the advantage that it fitted my philosophy at the time, to experience every possible mode of transport and class of travel during my five week stay in China.

There was talk of a typhoon approaching but it seemed like a sturdy ship and I did not realise that this was just the local expression for what we call a cyclone, or in America, a hurricane. I was thinking it meant we were just in for a bit of a rain at the time. It was quite a storm of course and after anticipating what may happen in the cramped poorly ventilated cabins below deck, quickly came up with the five extra dollars for a private cabin up top. I was able to ride out the storm flat on the bed hoping the hull would stay in one piece as we repeatedly became airborne between waves.

The ship was a former Japanese ferry, a rather sexy and fashionable 1960’s design poorly hidden beneath the loose grey covers that concealed a more glorious past.

The second night at sea after the passing of the storm was a cause for celebration as everyone regained their appetites. In the former ballroom a crowd had gathered for a party of some kind.

It was pretty sedate and the sea of Mao suits and other drab clothing did little to cheer the room up. Under the loose cotton seat protectors I could see hot pink wool upholstery. Not sure if these were to protect the seats or the passengers. There was a complimentary hot drink at each table called coffee cha. Simply add hot water from the thermos flask to the pill at the bottom of your plastic tumbler and the mystery beverage was ready. It was going to be an early to bed evening I thought.

Suddenly a hit song blasted from the sound system, ‘Wake me up before you go-go’, by Wham. Without hesitation the entire crowd of a few hundred turned to me and smiled. Adding a few hand gestures It was painfully clear that I was being invited to the empty dance floor, to perform a demonstration of disco dancing. Embarrassed, I reassured myself that I had no reason to be and invited a young girl from the crowd to join me. I tried to imagine I was at New York’s Danceteria and gave it my best, not wanting to disappoint. This was true international diplomacy at a grass roots level.

Within a minute a few aspiring groovers were around me replicating my every step and move as if they were learning the Vienna Waltz. At the conclusion of the second song I was able to regain my seat and hide, to a rousing round of applause. Disembarking on a gloomy morning in Shanghai it was apparent that I had become everyone’s foreign friend as we bid each other farewell. The embarrassment was well worth the warm reception.

All I could think to myself was, who was going to believe this?

Life before travel

Pooraka wasn’t such a bad place to grow up. I had lots of friends from school who all lived a walk or bike ride away and we often had people dropping in from next door, there was always something going on, always people about. Our dog, Rhubarb, roamed the neighbourhood freely, chased cars and always sat too close to the radiator.

We were ten kilometres from the centre of Adelaide, in other words way, way out of town on the northern fringe near an abattoir. It was the sort of the wrong side of town, the hot, dry, dusty side. Pooraka was an indigenous word meaning ‘dried up water hole’. These days developers tend to go for names like Caroline Springs or Mawson Lakes when subdividing flat dusty paddocks into gated, lifestyle communities.

I liked it. It was a bit of the country - which was hotter drier and dustier - in the