MY YEAR IN FLIP FLOPS
Businesswoman Angela spent a year travelling Asia and is encouraging other women to do the same thing
AB U S I N E S S WOMAN who gave up her job to spend a year travelling around Asia will see her “year in flip flops” published as a book next year.
Angela Elwood, 55, left Cardiff for Cambodia on April 20, 2015. Before her journey, she led a community-focused life in Cardiff, where she had lived for more than 30 years running two successful businesses.
She won an Independent Retailer of the Year Award in 1996 for running convenience store Spar on Cowbridge Road and more recently has owned camera store Express Imaging on City Road.
But at a certain point, Angela realised she wanted a change.
She said: “A couple of years ago, I decided that the kids were grown up, leaving home, and what next for me? So I had this idea. I’ve always wanted to travel. I always took the kids travelling, and then I decided I was going to take a year off and just travel Southeast Asia on my own.”
Angela, from Roath in Cardiff, spent nine months preparing for the trip.
“It was endless goodbyes, meet-ups and meals. I left my house two weeks before going, and I went to stay with a relative, so I didn’t leave from my own front door. I left from somebody else’s front door so I was ready to go.
“And it was amazing. Once I said goodbye, I thought I was going to be emotional but I wasn’t. I was just completely focused. I knew where I was going. I knew what I wanted to do and I just boarded that plane and thought, ‘here I come’.”
Once in Asia, Angela booked a 10-day tour through Cambodia with a guide and then taught English in Takeo Province for a couple of weeks. She did a loop through Vietnam and Laos, then back to Thailand and Cambodia, where she taught more English.
She said: “I loved working with the children, and I did feel that although they benefited from being taught English, I just wondered if they would benefit from being taught English by one person for a longer period of time.”
After travelling through Malaysia, Singapore and Myanmar [Burma] she spent three more months teaching English in Thailand, at a school in Bua Yai, five hours north of Bangkok. She then spent a month in Australia before returning to Cardiff.
And through it all she took photos and jotted down memories, realising early on that she wanted to write a book about her experiences.
Angela said: “It’s so that I can process the memories myself, and also for my family and friends. But then as I travelled, people became interested in what I was doing, and I wrote about some of the people that I’d met.”
She said she had always wanted to write a book.
“It’s always been on my bucket list, and I didn’t know that this was going to be the book. But it had its own momentum.”
Angela said: “I love my feet being free, and one thing I noticed when I came back was that my feet were sore because I had to go back into shoes. And I knew ‘flip flops,’ that’s the title.”
Angela’s photos documented her journey, updating loved ones back home, but now they will form an integral part of the book.
She said: “I always take photographs, as a rule. But it was funny because you don’t want to put your photographs up and say, ‘hey, look where I am today’ sort of thing. But a lot of people – friends, family – wanted to know that I was safe, that I was having a good time.
“And so I put my photographs online and a little blurb in there.”
Describing the small moments that made up her trip, she said: “Things like being in Ho Chi Minh City and being absolutely panicked by the number of motorcycles. You literally cannot get across the road. They don’t abide by traffic lights. There are no rules. It’s fend for yourself. Being five weeks into my journey and realising that I had to get over my fear of crossing the road.
“I was coming home one night and a guy walked up to me. I was standing by the road thinking, ‘my hotel’s there, I could get a taxi, but why can’t I get across this road?’ and a guy walked up to me.
“He gestured to the road and I said, ‘yeah,’ and he took me by the hand and I thought, ‘Oh god, everything that everyone told me is going to happen. I’m going to be robbed or whatever.’
“And he took me across the road, and he gestured to the next one, I went, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s the way I’m going.’
“And he took me across that junction as well, and then he just bowed to me and walked away. And I just felt so humbled in that moment because he had helped me and he hadn’t asked for anything, nothing from me at all.”
Occasional reminders of home, such as when her class wore Santa outfits and presented Angela with a Christmas tree and presents on Christmas Day, helped her adjust, too.
Angela, who has already returned to Cambodia since coming back to Cardiff in April, will be returning to teach in Thailand on November 21. She will