An incident I experienced last month got me thinking… will I be in over my head next year?
I work as a Business Management Consultant, which is just a fancy job title for “I Travel Way Too Much for My Job”. I am on the road for work Monday thru Fridays and am the only person under the age of fifty who travels in first class on a regular basis. The perks of being a road warrior (miles, points, Platinum status, etc.) will come in handy next year when Tony and I are traveling the globe, but this lifestyle is not all that glamorous.
For instance, I recently became a buffet meal to a family of bedbugs while staying in a New Jersey Marriot.
I had heard the horror stories of these vicious creatures all over the news but always turned a blind eye and went about my travels… ignorance is bliss in cases like these! But it was only a matter of time before this ignorance came to bite me in the ass (pun intended).
I woke up Tuesday morning looking like a leper. I had about 50 bites…Correction: massive welts – all down my back, arms, legs, and face. They even bit my earlobes.
What kind of heartless bug bites your earlobes!?
This whole fiasco ended in me switching hotels, bingeing on antihistamines, buying new luggage, boiling my entire work-week wardrobe in hot water (well the laundry service at the Marriott may have done that one for me), and caused me to look like a patient in the Infectious Disease Ward for 5 days.
This isn’t the first time I have had a terrible health-related travel experience. When I was twelve, I came down with second degree burns in the Virgin Islands, due to a day in the sun (gone wrong). Six years later, I was on a family vacation at a five-star resort in Mexico and consuming tap water from restaurant ice cubes, which ended in me spending the remainder of the trip hugging the toilet bowl.
If I can’t even handle a three-star Marriott in Jersey (let alone a five-star resort), what on earth am I going to be like next year when I am overseas living out of my back-pack, eating the cheapest local meals I can find, and staying in hostels (and flying on airplanes) whose only Platinum members are my new best friends – bedbugs?
More importantly, what precautions can I take next year to avoid these kinds of catastrophes?
So what do you think? Any best travel practices you wish to share?
Exhausted from traveling every week as a Business Management Consultant early in my career, I took a year off in 2012 to travel at my own pace. I am a high-energy girl that loves being active, eating food, drinking wine, and exploring the world with my partner-in-crime (and husband), Tony! I now reside in Portland, Oregon and continue to write about travel, food, wine, and the awesome adventures we have in the Pacific NW!
Meg….you are a great writer….my best travel practice advice for you is to keep a great journal….come home and write your story and retire a millionaire by age 30!
Thanks for the advice Cheryl! That would be a dream come true…maybe even more so if we could stay on the road and write!
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