"Mercy, I want to go to Dubai before the end of the year".
"Mercy, we should visit Mauritius, I heard it is pretty cheap to go there this time of the year".
These are my friends making imaginary travel plans. Fine, I would LOVE travel and all but when I think about the fact that we don't even have passports, I find it terribly hilarious but saddening that we can only go to certain places via fantasies.
As a middle class Nigerian student, when we even try to push aside the money factors, we would then think about the time it would take to go to whatever country we want to go to. The type of person I am, I find it difficult to make inter-state journeys not to talk of making international journeys due to the fact that I get car sick. I really hope I don't embarrass myself by barfing all over someone on a plane someday. I once threw up in a bus from Lagos State to Ijebu-ode (my Nigerians would understand how short the distance is). In my defence, the windows were wound up and the AC was barely doing anything. Some people just like the idea of being inside AC though.
Anyway, back to the my struggles. Now, as a student in a university where tests that can make or mar your CGPA are given at the snap of the lecturer's finger, what would I do when I am sent a WhatsApp message about a 40 mark test while I am sipping gelato in Spain with a 6-pac latino messaging my tense shoulders? Not like I think about this regularly though (sigh) but really, what would I do?
Then we move to the price tags attached to the countries when I hear them being described by various people who have been there. These, I think, are the most demoralising. All you hear is this thousand dollars, that thousand dollars. Please, is it somebody whose bank accounts (yes, I said accountS, I have 4) are barely ever in tens of thousands that will know what thousands of dollars would look like? I think not!
Anyway, lately, I have been trying to plan my life and visit at least 1 country outside my continent before I leave the "early 20's" category. A place I would actually love to visit is Abu Dhabi.
I don't know why but I happen to have a sudden love for the Middle East.
In my quest to find information about this place, I stumbled on timbu.com.
This site has been a godsend. It has information on hotel prices, pictures as well as various locations to visit.
Going to Abu Dhabi seems easier now because I seem to have a value to save towards (if I actually have the money to start saving with in the first place) throughhttps://timbu.com/united-arab-emirates.
Let's see how it all goes though. I might be posting pictures of myself from the Middle East in my next post. *wink wink*
