Travel bug bites and I get ready to follow the flag

It's time to make plans for the Chinese New Year travel adventure. I try to go somewhere warm but don't really care where as long as I haven't been there before. The only thing I know for sure is that I will be joining my fifth Chinese tour.

My measly teacher's salary doesn't allow me to travel like most Westerners so I follow the flag, sticking out like a sore thumb wherever we go. I wasn't sure I'd like it when I first started out, but four trips later, I can say there are advantages to traveling this way.

I love traveling but hate all the arrangements that have to be made, the planes, the hotels, transport in foreign countries. Plus the fact that I am so hopeless with directions I can get lost in my own backyard. A tour takes care of all of that. If I can get myself to the departure airport I don't have to give all those pesky details another thought.

My appearance at the airport, however, gives the guides a bad few minutes. They expect someone named Lee to be Chinese. They scurry away and make a frantic phone call to the agency. I hurriedly assure them that though I speak no Chinese they won't have any trouble with me. I'll just follow. They probably don't believe it but what can they do, I'm booked. So off we go.

On the trip to Egypt, our Egyptian guide apologized and said he would try to tell me in English what he said in Chinese, but I assured him that wouldn't be necessary. I'd been learning about Egypt since I was old enough to read. All he had to do was tell me the destinations for the day and I could refresh my memory from my guide book. It worked like a charm.

On the first trip to Europe I simply went along with the group but on the second trip I'd already seen the must-sees, so I agreed to meet them back at the starting point and off I went to places I'd dreamed about visiting but weren't on the itinerary. Everyone was happy.

Food can be an issue. In Egypt, only Cairo had a Chinese restaurant. Everywhere else we had Egyptian food which was marvelous. On the first trip to Europe I discovered, to my horror, that the rest of the group wanted to eat only Chinese food. Well, in England I can understand, but in France? In Italy? In Spain?

So I arranged to meet them back at the Chinese restaurant and found a nearby place that served local food. Since the Chinese restaurants are often in the seedy side of town I can find myself in a pub or a down-at-the heels diner, so the surroundings aren't always posh, but the food is authentic.

The Chinese members of the tour and I travel for entirely different reasons. My fellow tourists want to take photos of themselves in front of things and shop. I want to do neither. Sometimes I don't even bother to take a camera, which strikes the other group members as bordering on the perverse. So while they are snapping and shopping I am strolling, absorbing the sights and sounds of foreign lands. We're all doing what we want and we will take our memories home in different ways.

We begin as strangers at the departure airport, but by the time we return home we have become fellow-travelers and friends. Some will even send me their pictures!

I can't wait to do it again.