TRAVEL AND THE FOMO OF FOOD

There are apps for everything, it seems, and they have revolutionised the traveller's experience of navigating new places. A hat-tip to Google Maps for basic navigation. You are here. Whilst, platforms like Foursquare have added social functionality so we can all now see where you are, what you did and what you thought of it. And with food playing such a big role now in our travel experiences, the fear of missing out (FOMO) sees us reaching for our devices, looking for the answer to just about the most important question of all: What's good to eat nearby?

Travel and food. Food and travel. pretty inseparable, aren't they? Gastro-Tourism. Paris, Florence, New York, Melbourne, The Barossa, Bangalow (indulge me) all places with supreme culinary credentials. But once you're there, how do you know what's around you, and what's worth sampling? You can follow your nose (my favourite), do it old-school with a printed guide book (with luck the highly-rated dumpling place might still be operating), put a call-out to your social networks, or make the most of your phone's geolocation by tapping into an app.

BLIZZARD OF OZ: New York City in Winter

I was totally unprepared for New York City in winter.

The moment I stepped onto the icy-slick pavement just beyond the warm lobby of the Hotel Beacon on Broadway at 75th Street, a deep chill worked its way through the soles of my completely inappropriate shoes.

There wasn’t much I could do about it. I was wearing the warmest things in my suitcase. But the prospect of zig-zagging stroll through sparkling New York streets to Times Square was irresistible. So, dismissing the cold, I set off like the Cowardly Lion across Oz's snow-dusted poppy fields...‘Unusual weather we’re having, ain’t it?’

It was relentless, the cold. And even before I’d passed Gray’s Papaya I could feel it crawling through the neck of my meagre sweater. My chin was cramping, my socks were soon wet and my ears would have shattered had you given them a flick.

GOING BACK

Toberua Island Resort, Fiji - 1984 & 2014

Travel memories are funny. They're a mix of so many things. Emotions. Smells. Sounds. The people you encountered and connected with. They can be rich and visceral. But also feel so totally fragile.

There are a couple of places I've visited that I feel drawn back to. They're places that were the source of treasured experiences and memories. A particular mix of people, happenings and timing. Such a random and fleeting coming together of elements that only ever existed at that moment in time. Never before and never again will things align precisely like that. And yet, like chasing a high you know you'll never find, you feel compelled to go back.

But what then of those precious, original memories? Where do they end up?

WHEN DID FLYING BECOME SO 'MEH'?

It's not like this anymore...

International flights, particularly short-haul ones, have really changed, haven't they?

Maybe I'm being sentimental but I miss the huge, four-engined, twin aisle aircraft that operated routes from Australia, the hot meals, the giant video screens and projectors, the sense of excitement. Maybe it's all tangled up in the memories of a long-ago childhood but, sitting here in a wee 737 roaring across the Pacific, it all seems so bland now.

Normal now seems to be a quick meal service. Lights out. And please don't ask for anything else.

THOUGHTS ON SAMOA

It's been a while since I've been somewhere new. For the first time, I mean. You know the feeling. Excitement swirling around some preconceptions of the place. You've flipped through the brochure, thought the stock shots looked nice, but you've been let down by them before, right?

Samoa is definitely not a let-down. But half way between New Zealand and Hawaii, it is still something of an unknown to most travellers even those with a bit of the South Pacific under their belts.

It's absolutely the quintessential South Pacific paradise, I honestly don't think I've been anywhere prettier. But, even better, it's also a place with a bunch of fascinating, historical quirks.

Pick up the Samoan phone directory and you'll see names like Schuster, Schwenker and Wendt - a legacy of colonisation by Germany in the early 20th century. If you're a literary buff you might know about Robert Louis Stevenson passing the final years of his life here. In 2009, Samoa announced that its cars would no longer drive on the right hand side of the road (another legacy of the Germans), switching instead to the left - a move that was met by protests from bus drivers furious that their doors would now open on the wrong side, a Red Cross blood donation campaign for the inevitable surge in accidents, and a three-day ban on alcohol sales, just in case.

2013 - A SINGLE ORBIT

So the Earth has completed another graceful orbit of the Sun, something like 940 million kilometres at 30 or so a second. Goodness knows how many it's done in its time, or how many more it's got in it. A fair few, I'd say, Around and around, bathing the poles in long stretches of daylight and darkness, and painting the rest of this earthly canvas in seasonal colour and rubbing it out with ferocious moments of weather. I don't know how many sunrises or sets you saw this year. I saw a few. The tick-tock of the biggest timepiece in the solar system….sigh.

As the planet spun its way around, plenty of us zipped about a bit too. I followed the journeys of friends, family, colleagues here and there…daily reminders of the incredible opportunities and experiences available to anyone with the means to take advantage of them. With a passport, ticket and 24 hours you can get yourself just about anywhere. A golden age, indeed.

The travels of my year took in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Port Douglas, Smiths Lake, Bali, Oman, Abu Dhabi, Dubai (twice) and Singapore. Not a bad set of passport stamps at all. Happy with that.

SINGAPORE FLINGS

Singapore's a curious place. A tiny island state with few natural resources, this financial leviathan is famous for its food, cleanliness, its order, safety, its zoo and, now, for a bundle of shiny new things like Marina Bay Sands, the Supertree Grove in the Gardens by The Bay, it even has a massive ferris wheel - an important attraction for any serious city these days.

I first visited in 2000 and really thought nothing of it. To be honest, at the time, it was probably the dullest place I'd ever seen. It was a flying visit. Literally a weekend. After a walk through Bugis Street, a Kodak moment by Raffles, a quick stop down by the waterfront to see the famed Merlion statue - the mythical beast with the body of a fish and the head of a lion - and a bite to eat (albeit a sensational one) at a hawker centre, by lunchtime we'd pretty much ticked off everything we thought worth seeing.

My experiences in other Asian cities had been different. Very different. In Hong Kong and Bangkok the gateways into the noise and nasty that's often waiting for you just below the surface are well lit. Welcome stranger…come on in and play.

GREAT BARRIER REEF? It's even better than that.

When you're peering across acres of coral in the shallows 70 km out to sea off the coast of Port Douglas, you realise that it's not called the Great Barrier Reef for nothing. A short distance away, the energy carried by the South Pacific collides with Australia's continental shelf. This is irresistible force meets immovable object stuff. And yet, somehow, we're bobbing about peacefully unawares of the battle playing out across the coral barrier nearby.

Snorkelling here can be mesmerising. Eyes up, gazing forward through a thin film of water separating life below from life above. Making yourself as skinny as possible to avoid scratches and cuts from the coral. Drifting over those sharp, corally fingertips reaching for the surface, making the gentlest movements with your flippers to keep yourself in slightly deeper water before the coral and ocean floor suddenly falls away leaving you soaring across an ever darkening depth. Your gasp exaggerated by the snorkel pressed beside your ear.

DUBAI - Ugly Duckling

To be fair, I knew Dubai was going to be pretty remarkable. The biggest this. The tallest that. The shiniest, most gleaming, diamond encrusted one of these, all thrusting unapologetically from the desert like an amped-up Oz. And until recently I could kind of take it or leave it. Dubai, to me, seemed contrived. A constructed freak show. A grotesque, urban, Frankenstein's monster. Bits of this and that mashed together and forced brutally onto a culture desperately trying to create the future at all costs.

I should declare a bias here. I was for a time employed by the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, and the look-at-me-ness of neighbouring Dubai was, I felt, tolerated in the way an older, more conservative sister might a brash, attention seeking, superficial sibling. What has she done this time? So, when I visited to attend Arabian Travel Market 2013 (courtesy of the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing) my expectations were, I guess, framed by that experience.

TRAVEL REGRETS, I HAVE A FEW...

Small Town, USA. Easy to miss.

I know you shouldn't have regrets. But there is that saying about only regretting the things you haven't done. You know the one.

Travel lends itself to those. Opportunities that present themselves fleetingly on the road. Sometimes repeatedly. I understand there's no possible way to embrace every temptation that crosses your path. And I'd say I've grabbed onto more than I've missed over the years. But, peering into the rear-view mirror, I wish I'd done a few things differently.

So, it's time to air them. To fess up and offload the weight I've been carrying around in my day-pack of travel regrets, stuff-ups and missed opportunities, and up-end some of them onto the pavement of Get Over It Street.