Writing a blog post in 10 minutes or less

Thailand was amazing, but there’s definitely some jealousy when we now see the Instagram stories of those still travelling.

Today, I’m challenging myself to write a blog post in 10 minutes or less – and that even includes this very first paragraph.

Even if I’ve not finished it, I’ll cease typing once my stopwatch has hit 10:00:00 because I’ve decided that those are the rules.

I’m not even sure what exactly to talk about, but I think that I should acknowledge the topic that’s always at hand on this website – travel.

It’s now been just over a month since me and my mates returned from three-and-a-half weeks in Thailand and it was an incredible trip.

One of my favourite things about it was meeting other travellers and then even bumping into them in other parts of the country as we travelled around.

But, on the flip side, that very thing brings with it one of the worst things about our Southeast Asian adventure and that’s having these people on Instagram.

Now it was a great tool when we were out there for keeping in touch, but it’s not been the easiest watching those travelling for much longer than we were, continue to enjoy their travels whilst we’re stuck at home in cold, grey Britain.

On a serious note, it’s great to see everyone having a ball, as we did over the 24 days we were out there.

It even makes me more excited for my next trip – to Algerian capital, Algiers – in March. No days off work, fly out on Friday and return early on Monday morning. I’ll be heading straight into the office with a couple of hours of plane sleep, absolutely exhausted, but finding comfort in the fact I’ll have spent the weekend in a new country, on another continent, and will have conserved my remaining annual leave.

Algeria was somewhere I’d had planned for Easter weekend back in 2020, and it was the second of the trips I had to cancel due to COVID. The first was Rome with my Dad and brother and last year I was able to go to Rome, albeit by myself, and also travel with my Dad to Paris and Brussels for his 60th birthday.

On my third trip to Rome back in April 2022, I finally visited the famous Totti mural.

But Algiers hasn’t been so easy to rearrange thanks to the small matter of a visa. £100 later and another visit to the Algerian Consulate in London for my passport, it looks as though 2023 will finally be the year I get to visit this North African nation.

I recently renewed my passport, back in August last year, because it was full of stamps and visas from my travels. But the only page that had been filled but without leaving the country was the one containing my unused Algerian visa.

Hopefully this time, the Algeria page in my passport will evoke great memories and not flashbacks to the start of a pandemic.