Amy was recently found in the Himalayan regions of Nepal by a team of Austrian explorers. Wrapped in Tibetan prayer flags and mumbling incoherently about Shangri-La, she was slowly lowered to a much more respectable altitude where she politely declined a cup of yak butter tea.
Amy’s desire for new experiences, hunger for new meetings, and passion for new perspectives leads her to expensive new airplane tickets and cheap hotels. This in turn leaves Amy’s mother a nervous wreck, who kindly bails Amy out of trouble on a regular basis.
It isn’t that Amy dislikes home, it’s quite the opposite – she just loves to travel. In fact she famously came second only to Angelina Jolie as the most recognised face in the non English-speaking world – something she is all too proud of.
Between the ages of 19 and 22, Australian-born Amy called London home. There she made it her mission to befriend local bar staff and policemen in a bid to make her time as a youth hostel manager a smooth one. When she last attempted to enter the United Kingdom she was permitted to stay for only 30 days and asked to kindly refrain from returning for at least 3 years.
During a European adventure that followed, Amy experienced the pain of wet corduroy frozen to her flesh in Norway, attempted to buy a can opener in a small Spanish village, ate a giant jar of nutella in one sitting in Amsterdam and slept in a camping-ground bathroom block in Tuscany for over a week.
With a back problem and a nasty sugar addiction, Amy returned to Australia and completed a B.A. in International Studies. She then decided she was ready to see more of Asia – she never asked if Asia was ready to see more of her.
Amy spent a year and a half in South Korea reducing small children to tears before packing her bags and an unusually short friend to head off on an epic voyage around Asia. Together they were like a pair of Pied Pipers for cockroaches, dishonest taxi drivers and people who like to stare. They were twice invited into the homes of strangers for tea – from the first house they left with fists full of candy, from the second; minus $100. They have since stopped accepting tea from people they don’t know.
When Amy isn’t sharing the rooftop of Nepalese buses with ill-fated goats or trying to mask the smell of chicken poo on her backpack, she can usually be found in the nearest bar chatting to local old men – she swears it’s for their interesting stories and nothing more.
Amy hates being told that “it is time to settle down”. She loves South Korean boy bands. There are many places Amy has been but many more she hasn’t. She isn’t about to settle down yet. It’s a big world out there…
***In January 2010, Amy won the World Nomads Travel Writing Scholarship and was sent to Japan to work on the Rough Guides to Japan and Tokyo. It was there she sampled a meal involving the sperm of a cod fish. She is hoping she doesn’t turn out as the one hit wonder girl with chronic writer’s block. Her father is hoping his grandchildren will not be born with scales.***
THESE ROADS 