Two and a half years ago I quit my job and I went exploring.

I thought that I may be gone for no more than a year before I satisfied my wanderlust and I settled back down again.

Europe 2013

How wrong was I!  I really threw myself in at the deep end that first summer in Europe.

• I went to to my first ever proper festival (in Lisbon),
• I worked on a farm in the Algarve,
• I was house sitting in Italy
• I looked after (sort of) 7 golfers in a gite in France
• I went to a wedding in Gibraltar

A year in South America

Scarlet Jones Travels – Brazil

And then I fulfilled my childhood dream (thanks Paddington Bear) of going to deepest darkest Peru.  I was in South America for 364 days but I hardly scratched the surface.  I usually travel slowly and I try to integrate with communities so I didn’t cover half of the ground that I had planned to, but I did manage to get to

• Peru
• Bolivia
• Ecuador
• Colombiaaaaa
• and Brazil

After a month or so in the UK over Christmas and the New Year I spent nearly a week in Tampere in dark snowy Finland before heading back to Spain for a break and I prepared for my next adventure – which was…..

Blasting through the Baltics.

The initial plan was to travel from Finland to Morocco in a camper van with a friend who I had met in Colombia but stuff got in the way and I had to fly back to the UK from Warsaw.  However I did manage to see Helsinki, and then the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the top right-hand corner of Poland.  Those few weeks were crazy and emotional for many reasons (you will have to wait for the book) and the weather threw everything at us from the most idyllic winter weather ever in Helsinki and Estonia to blizzards, icestorms and biting winds at other times.

Scarlet Jones Travels – Estonia

I spent my third summer away from my 9 to 5 job…

Cavorting in Catalunya

I worked hard and I played hard.  I spent HOURS tapping away at my keyboard, designing an on-line course (watch this space as it will be launched very soon now).  I would often put in more than 10 hours a day writing content but luckily I found plenty of time to explore the region led by my willing accomplice Debs.

And that brings me to now. Two and a half years on I am just beginning a new chapter – this time in South East Asia.  I have a very loose, tentative plan, an idea of a route around the region, but if travel has taught me anything it’s to not over plan so I’m not going to set it out in print at this stage.

What I do know is that I will spend some time in Bangkok where I am very excited to be attending my second TBEX (Travel Bloggers Conference), and then…..well, you will have to wait and see.

I will also be launching my on-line course very soon and as a result of that I may have to rent a room somewhere and base myself in a place with decent wifi in case there are any last minute glitches with the launch.

And I don’t know why, but dramas always seem to follow me around and this trip so far has been no exception.  Getting to Thailand was always going to be a bit of a slog but I had managed to buy an excellent value ticket with a decent travel time and just a 2 hour transfer in Mumbai.  And then, just 17 minutes in to my overnight coach journey to the airport I received an email which told me that due to ‘an incident’ over Turkish airspace my flight had been seriously delayed and I would miss my connection.

Yes – things are back to normal!

If you would like to receive my blog articles directly by email and read what other dramas are going to befall me – you can guarantee that there will be many – make sure that you go to my site and sign up.  You will also get a free copy of the ‘Top 10 things that you should know before travelling’ and you will be one of the first to learn about my course when it launches.

Are you ready?  Watch this space for…

Scarlet Travels Solo in South East Asia

Scarlet Jones Travels – Bangkok