Michael Batson

There’s an old adage about what to take with you on your travels and it goes something like this: lay out all the clothes you’re planning on taking with you and then all the money. Then take only half the clothes and bring twice the money. That may be a little dated in the age of plastic but back when people carried cash and traveller’s cheques, remember those, it made a lot of sense. In fact it still does today. You can never have enough of the readies but clothes and other such items well, you can always buy some more. In fact even high-tech countries in this digital age can have problems. A friend of mine once found himself transiting through Japan a few years back when some kind of outage hit the ATM network. All the banks were closed. Let’s face it, if you can’t get the latest IT help in Japan, then you’re in pretty dire straits.  The point being cash and Thomas Cook, or similar, can still come in handy. As an aside, I have history with Thomas Cook after a mishap at the Pyramids with a local named George, one of Cairo’s more infamous characters and if I recall, had his very own feature piece in Fodor’s Travel Guide, or some similar travel publication. One of the great attractions of travel is that you get to leave much of your baggage, in a holistic sense, behind. You are after all, going for something different. Well most are. But you still need something to carry your stuff in – or on. This article of mine isn’t designed to tell