the bucket list

You're not a cool travel blogger until you have a cool travel bucket list. Fact.

As far as I can tell, these are designed to present all the especially cool things you've done, concisely and with photos. Inspired by the well-marked bucket lists of travel buds like Oceana, the Barefoot Beach Blonde and Chris, curly-wigged brain behind Backpacker Banter, I wrote my own. 

The process caused some distressful introspection (what introspection isn't distressful?) about things like why I aspire to these things, and what on earth might I actually gain from achieving them, and what if I actually manage to complete the list, but then I feel cold and empty inside?

But it's done. I want to be cool, after all.

grand aspirations, incomplete and in no particular order

1.       witness the northern lights

2.       teeter on the edge of an active volcano

3.       make a really great snowman, with the carrots and the scarf and whatnot, and giant plump raisins for eyes. Or something like that.

(see Chamonix, France, February 2014)

4.       brave some kind of snowy alps in a bikini

5.       stand in the Colosseum

 

(see Rome, Italy, October 2013)

6.       find a gluten free croissant; eat the croissant. If croissant not available, invent a gluten free croissant.

(see Florence, Italy, October 2013)

7.       really live in another culture

8.       frown at the Mona Lisa

 

(see Paris, France, September 2013)

9.       order a meal some place where I don't speak the local language, in the local language

10.   see so many old buildings that I'm tired of old buildings

 

(see absolutely everywhere in Europe, 2013)

11.   moan my way through a dark northern winter and possibly dance naked in the grass when the sun finally reappears

12.   dive with some super great sea life in the Galapagos Islands

13.   shake it up and swim with bioluminescent bacteria

 

(Koh Rong, Cambodia, January 2013) 

14.   sky dive, anywhere

15.   hike the Inca trail to Manchu Picchu

16.   cruise the north coast of Australia in a camper

17.   watch that ball fall in New York

18.   sunset and sunrise at Angkor Wat

(Siem Riep, Cambodia, February 2013)

19.   Uluru and some good old outback in general

20.   dive the Great Barrier Reef

 

(Airlie Beach, Australia, March 2013)

21.   give the Great Wall of China a go

22.   take an exceptionally dorky tourist photo at the Great Pyramids

23.   get ma flair on at Carnival in Rio

24.   learn to ski or maybe to snowboard, preferably without serious injury

25.   learn another language to a functional standard and not be afraid to speak said language in front of people

26.   get all up in a lion's grill on Safari

27.   take the little sis to Orlando, Florida to visit Harry Potter

28.   get my party on at full moon party on Koh Phangan

29.   have my fortune told in some kind of dark room full of mystical crystals and the like

30.   hike the Kokoda trail, maybe in cammo gear

31.   do a run for charity somewhere and actually run

32.   eat something traditional that vaguely (or strongly) repulses me

 

(a cricket: Da Lat, Vietnam, February 2013)

(no photo evidence - Kopi Luwak: Bali, Indonesia, July 2012)

33.   swim with elephants

34.   do something great that helps save the world

35.   hike Te Araroa, New Zealand