With Australia with Simon Reeve wowing us – last Sunday’s episode focused on the Red Centre and free-range camels and this Sunday’s is devoted to the grape – we caught five minutes with Simon to talk travel before he headed off on another adventure …
What do you always do when you travel – any routine procedures?
Ha ha ha! Yes I have! I have a kit list that is about the length of a telephone book and I go through it and select whatever I need. If I’m doing multi-week trips away to remote parts of the planet I go through the kit list, which includes things like reminders to take flapjacks, machetes, inflatable life rafts, satellite beacons and bashas (a waterproof cover to pull over your hammock and keep you dry in the jungle).
What is your travel pet peeve?
I get quite annoyed about some aspects of travel but only because I’m doing 20 flights per month. I go about a bit mad about immigration forms, filling in the same forms over and over again and answering the same questions with no apparent “results”. No one seems to look at them, particularly in more remote parts of the world.
Queues drive me mad, standing in line, shuffling forward.
Why do they make you go down that tunnel to the aeroplane? That I find soul-destroying, 1,000 passengers filing down the tunnel to the plane. It’s what I imagine death to be like. Passengers as self-loading cargo.
Carnets, which is something we have to contend with when we’re travelling. These forms that customs officials use to go through all our kit so they know we’re not importing or doing anything illegal. You could just watch your life ticking by as the officials check through the equipment (going as far as checking serial numbers on a camera) and think surely I should be somewhere else?
What is your favourite kind of trip (preferences, romantic, city, beach etc)?
Can I go with adventure? Adventure and a bit of discovery. I’m not great at sitting by the pool although now that I have a little boy he loves it. I’d be a cruel father if I said to my two year old “let’s go explore churches or climb a mountain”.
I’m looking forward to going on missions of discovery with him. I think the travel industry has done very well persuading us all to be static cash cows, but if you want a truly memorable holiday you have got to get out and eat different food and dance crazily with locals. That way you really remember your holiday.
Best destination you have ever been to and why?
Tough! I’m going to go with Australia. It’s really leaping around in my head. It’s a vast country the size of a continent. It’s got an extraordinary range of landscapes and environments.
You can ski, you can surf, you can wander around areas which are completely absent of people and certainly free of tourists and you can go to two of the best cities in the world – Sydney and Melbourne. In Australia you have all of the extremes and plenty of bang for your buck.
Where in the world offers the best value for money?
Probably Mozambique. It’s a fascinating place. You can still get bargains there and you can travel in an adventurous way and stay somewhere truly gobsmacking. It hasn’t got a very developed travel industry for those who like to get off the beaten track and its coastline on the Indian Ocean is truly gorgeous. Utterly spectacular.
I like to call it Latin Africa. Mozambique has the best aspects of South America and some of the best aspects of Africa. It has a different vibe and you feel it as soon as you arrive there.
Where would you pay to stay? Is there anywhere you think offers great value and a great deal?
The place I’m thinking of is Laos. I filmed there and I’d like to go back there with my little clan. I’d pay to go back to most places to be honest. There are very few destinations I’ve visited for filming that I wouldn’t like to go back to.
Laos is a forested, landlocked country; it’s got a real mystique. Like Mozambique, the tourist industry is not massively developed. It feels a bit off the map, which I really like, and not entirely on the South East Asia tourist trail.
I think it’s a really cool place to go and it has bizarrely different food. When I was there, a guide ordered this plate of food which, when it arrived, was revealed to be composed of steaming buffalo poo. Not as bad as it sounds but really memorable.
What is the best airport you have flown from and is there a tip to make this airport experience great?
Can I say Heathrow? I don’t really remember many other airports to be honest but I do like Heathrow and it makes me feel quite comfortable. It’s often my last chance to get a few essentials before I travel off somewhere very foreign. It’s a sanctuary for me before I get in a metal box.
I always take light, nylon carry bags and I chuck everything in there – keys, change, belt – for security screening. It’s so you’re not panicking taking your belt off. I chuck everything in these nylon bags … a bottle of water, a book … and everything is less of a disaster.
When you fly, is there a tip you can share to make the experience a great one?
Pack a pillow, take a cake and buy some nice stuff in the airport to keep you going on the way as airlines seem reluctant to feed you these days. Just enjoy it.
Too many people complain about it but generally now airline travel is fast and efficient and the food is generally not too bad. I like airline food. But do take some extra cake because it makes the experience so much nicer.
If there was one travel nightmare trip, where would it be to and what would it involve?
I think it would involve going to a new airport in India and getting stuck in an immigration queue for five hours, which has happened to me and makes me shudder at the thought.
A little bit more about Simon: The adventurer and best-selling author has previously travelled around the Indian Ocean, Equator, Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn for the BBC. His last journey around the Indian Ocean (2012) was shown on BBC2 and by broadcasters in dozens of countries.
As a guest of Kuoni, the long-haul holidays specialist, Simon is talking about his latest TV series in a number of events around the UK: Tuesday, June 11 at Australia House, Strand, London; Thursday, June 13 at Kuoni John Lewis, The Hayes, Cardiff; Tuesday, June 18 at Market House, Market Place, Kingston upon Thames; and Thursday, June 20 at the Kuoni store, 50 The Promenade, Cheltenham.
