Things I Need To Learn Before We Travel

Since it is exactly 50 days until we head off on our 4 months travel (epppp) Lee and I have been in super planning mode. There seems to be a million things to get sorted but I have to admit i’m enjoying ever bit of it. It may be my nerdy planning side but an occasion that requires me to make ‘to-do’ lists and buy new notebooks makes it feel like Christmas…yes like I said, i’m a giant nerd.
This has made me start to think of some of the things I need to learn before we hit the road since it seems I may have missed out on some of the basic life skills required for backpacking. Lee , luckily has all of these skill already so he’s going to have to carry me around this holiday and make sure I’m not falling into any holes or chatting to weird looking strangers. What a lucky boy.
So here are the things I need to learn before I travel:
Learn to Ride a Bike
When traveling through Asia it seems that being able to ride a bike or a scooter is as important as bringing your passport. Scooters and travel go hand in hand so the fact I have missed out on this important life lesson may be a problem. In my mum’s defense I wanted to dance and draw instead of riding a bike when I was a kid but in the next 50 days I need to learn and learn quickly.
The logic behind riding a bike makes sense to me as an adult so i’m hoping it will come quite easily but that’s just a theory. I did in fact get on a bike a few years ago, it resulted in me crashing into the nearest wall seconds later in a style Jeremy Beadle would have been proud of.  The other worry is that there doesn’t seem to be one person who’s gone traveling that doesn’t have a horrific story about their scooter experience. If all else fails Lee will just have to have another passenger on the back of his scooter. Or we will walk…a lot.
Learn to Pack light
4 months and one carry on bag…ahhh! I use to be the person that carried everything anyone may need. My mum is the best for always having everything. There is a running joke in our family about the one time we all took a family trip to Spain. We were sat on the beach and my uncle ripped his shirt, he jokingly asked my mum if she had a needle and thread. She replied ‘do you want white thread or black thread’. So I’ve always followed in her footsteps and tried to have all the essentials (and a few extras)…then we had to move to Korea. We were given two bags and told to pack our lives into them. This seemed like an impossible task but after two years here I realise I could have traveled with half of what I had. Maybe it’s moving house 10 times in 10 years but I am finding it easier and easier to cull my items. Even so it seems the fates give me less and less to work with every time. 4 months on one tiny bag seems impossible but I’ve read a lot of great websites such as ‘Be My Travel Muse’ and ‘Adventurous Kate’ which means I’m hoping we will be able to do and I think it’s always important to remember that in Asia clothes are cheap and there isn’t anything that you will need in an emergency situation that you probably can’t get locally. Unless you are Lee who wants to pack Cadbury’s chocolate that is.
Learn to Drive
This probably isn’t something I think i’ll be able to fix before I leave Korea but it’s something I really (REALLY) want to learn when we are living in Australia. A knock on the head at 17 left me falling down and blackout for quite a few years but now i’m back in business and ready to drive. Lee is a great drive but I don’t know if he’ll be able to teach me since it may be like teaching a monkey to write Shakespeare but it will happen. Get the silk scarf , sunglasses and Frank Sinatra driving CD ready Australia.
Learn to go in the Ocean
Some people are scared of heights, some things are scared of the dark….I am afraid of deep water. The sea freaks me out no end. I love fish and turtles but sharks, jelly fish and all other creepy crawlies need to stay very far away. I would love to scuba dive and snorkel so i’m gonna get over this fear…maybe not in Australia (i.e shark country) but I WILL DO IT!

Learn to speak every language …quickly
A little self explanatory but we love to be able to try and say a few words in each country we go to. At the very least ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘hellos’. We are those lucky bloody travelers that speak English and we really are privileged that all countries have a basic understanding of our language but we don’t want to solely rely on that and be those stereotypical tourists shouting loudly at waiters so we have our print outs of all the countries languages and enough flights to hopefully try and get a basic grasp. Fingers crossed.

So that’s the list for now. Just a few basic things that I think will be helpful on the road. I’m not sure i’ll be able to do them in just 50 days. At least if I don’t learnt them you guys might get some funny photos of me terrified on a boat and crashing into bushes on bikes . 
Are there any things you’d recommend I learn before traveling? Was there anything you wish you’d learnt before traveling the world? What was your favourite travel experience?