Getting back on the travelling horse

I used to be a relatively intrepid traveller. Almost 11 years ago, I threw a rucksack on my back, and spent two months in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Of course we all know that travelling around South East Asia isn't particularly intrepid. It's so well trodden, all the 20 somethings have practically worn holes in the region with their converse trainers. But when you're 21 and it's just you and your Lonely Planet, it all feels pretty ground breaking.

And so, when, over a decade later, I found myself with similar jitters, on a different continent, I wondered where I'd gone wrong.

If you'd asked me as I stepped off that plane in Bangkok, whether I thought I'd ever be anxious about travelling when I was in my 30s, you would have gotten a funny look. Surely someone who managed, at 21, a ferry trip across the Melaka Straits, a bus trip next to some Indonesian guy apparently called Romeo who kept telling me he loved me (despite the husband and two children I told him I had waiting for me), and the experience of sitting in a guesthouse straight after 9/11 and watched CNN report they thought Bin Laden might be in that very country, couldn't be having travel nerves?

Well, the fact is, I was out of practice. London living, with its luxury travel options and package tours, had wrapped me in a boring bundle of cotton wool. I needed to get back on the horse. And that horse was to be a TAP Portugal flight to Accra.