Hey. Thanks for stopping by to give my blog a quick look. My name’s Daryl, I’m thirty-something, originally from Guildford in the UK but I grew up in Leicester before stints living in Newcastle, Durham, Wolverhampton, Bilston & Gateshead (UK), Killin (Scotland) and Dublin (Republic of Ireland) Currently I reside and teach English in Rui’an (China)
Ever since I can remember I’ve wanted to travel. The problem is, also ever since I can remember, I’ve had a number of health problems which were less than conducive to travelling 😦 I was born……in a crossfire hurricane! Sorry, couldn’t resist after that sentence opener 🙂 I was actually born with talipes (clubfoot) in the left foot. From the ages of one to three I underwent a series of operations to basically break & re-set the leg to straighten it up however this led to the left leg being a inch shorter and the left foot 3 sizes smaller (finding shoes that fit is an absolute bitch!) Sadly this had further implications for my bio-mechanics and from the age of 17 through to 30 I was continuously battling completely incapacitating lower back problems from an s-bend which developed in my spine. Said curvature caused the herniation of the two of the disks in my spinal vertebra, which were in turn continuously pressing on my sciatic nerve (which runs from the base of the neck through to the feet) I often couldn’t move for the pain, never mind pick up a backpack and so my travel was restricted to the occasional city-break on the odd instance the pain was in remission.
I got ‘lucky’ (if you could call it that) once I was 30 as, after a particularly long and painful period during which I was off work for nearly 11 months, the private medical insurance of company I was working for kicked in and I was finally able to received surgery to rectify the herniated disks. I was in hospital for 4 days and then in physiotherapy rehab for 3 months while I slowly worked on getting my movement back since which I’ve been back pain free and able to start living like a normal, functioning, fully-fledged grown-up member of society.
I tried that for a couple of years and decided it was really, really fucking boring.
I moved to Dublin in 2013 and while I enjoyed my life there, I didn’t enjoy my job. After the roller-coaster of pain, misery, mind-numbing painkillers and suffering that had been my time thus far there’s no doubt I needed that period of stability but it became apparent to me very quickly that 30 years of 9-5 in an office, mortgage, house in the suburbs and 2.4 children was not the way I wanted to go with my life. This is when, after decades in the doldrums of my mind, pushed aside by painkillers and depression, the travel dream stirred once again!
In 2015 I managed to negotiate a few months off work to travel Cambodia & Vietnam because 1) I’d always wanted to go there, 2) I needed to test out my back on the road & 3) just to see if travelling was going to be what I’d imagined it to be. This trip was either going to get it out of my system or light a fire. As it was, I had an incredible two months, rediscovering the joy of discovery and the child-like wonder of seeing something you’ve never even imagined could exist. Coupled with the wonderful people I met along the way, this lit a fire. I didn’t want to travel, I HAD to travel. Anything else would be a waste of my time on this earth and I’d spend my years looking back wondering what I could have been doing instead of staring at a f**king computer in an office all day.
On my return I set the wheels in motion, sold pretty much everything I owned, got my Celta so I could work as an English teacher while on my adventures (I’m not a rich man and sadly, I if want to eat and that I need to make some money somehow!) and now here I am! Currently I’m working in China and taking every opportunity I can to learn and explore before heading wherever the whim takes me!
Wonderboy Wanders 