My blood is type O rhesus negative. The universal donor. It’s fairly rare, and word of my arrival went out early to the mosquitos of Thailand, who have gorged on my blood for two months now.

Before I left, Dr. Engel muttered darkly about the psychotropic effects of taking malaria pills for a whole year.
   ‘How bad is it where you’re going?’
   ‘I don’t know. Better than Africa. Or Central America.’
I didn’t want the malaria pills either. They cost more than a bag of smack and give you nightmares. Eventually, we agreed that I would wear long trousers and use DEET insect repellent.

This is what happens when I wear DEET.

I spread a thin layer on my exposed skin, as directed. It’s the extra-strength stuff that turns car-paint to carrot juice, so I wash my hands carefully. Then I get absorbed in a book or a chat. Without thinking, I scratch my existing bites with newly grown-out nails (with my new stress-free life, I no longer bite my nails—well, mostly). Then I chew my nails, just a little, because old habits die hard. My tongue goes numb. Burble…stagger…

I wash my hands again. And do it again. Meanwhile, the skeeters snicker in the shadows, waiting for me to scratch off all the DEET to expose their tender midnight snack.

Why do some people get bitten all the time? I’ve heard so many explanations—thinner female skin, blood sugar level, hormones, blood type. Whenever I meet someone who complains as much as I do, I ask their blood-type. Odds are they’re O negative too, the 8% of the population who are suckers enough to give blood to anybody but who can accept it only from each other. Can mosquitos sniff this gullibility? Is that why some people get to sit calmly, unblemished, while I scratch like a beach dog and treat every headache as incipient dengue fever?

—Tweedledum

Today was my first day traveling alone. No guidebook, no language, no loving friends to take me in. I left my parents in Lanusei and caught a bus to Sassari, on the other side of the Sardinia. I took photos of them out the window of the bus and felt like I was leaving to go to college again.

It’s a good practice run for Southeast Asia. It took five hours to drive just 160km on the twisty mountain roads. The sheep took a mild interest in the efforts of the bus, but the goats had seen it all before. At Sassari, there were several contradictory timetables for tomorrow’s airport bus and instead of a ticket booth, a smudged list of bars where you could buy tickets. I sweated as I dragged my suitcase uphill over cobblestones. Italian men shouted encouragement, asked me the time, and guessed my nationality (French or Dutch, mostly). I caved immediately and checked myself into a fancy hotel, where I now sit intrepidly watching Fashion TV, flicking occasionally to a dubbed version of Manhattan. Woody Allen sounds butch in Italian. Wish I did.

—Tweedledum

Today was my first day traveling alone. No guidebook, no language, no loving friends to take me in. I left my parents in Lanusei and caught a bus to Sassari, on the other side of the Sardinia. I took photos of them out the window of the bus and felt like I was leaving to go to college again.

It’s a good practice run for Southeast Asia. It took five hours to drive just 160km on the twisty mountain roads. The sheep took a mild interest in the efforts of the bus, but the goats had seen it all before. At Sassari, there were several contradictory timetables for tomorrow’s airport bus and instead of a ticket booth, a smudged list of bars where you could buy tickets. I sweated as I dragged my suitcase uphill over cobblestones. Italian men shouted encouragement, asked me the time, and guessed my nationality (French or Dutch, mostly). I caved immediately and checked myself into a fancy hotel, where I now sit intrepidly watching Fashion TV, flicking occasionally to a dubbed version of Manhattan. Woody Allen sounds butch in Italian. Wish I did.

People constantly ask me for directions. I don’t know why. Today, yet another woman asked me the way to somewhere or other. I wanted to say: ‘Look! Look at my milk-white legs, my enormous suitcase, my sunhat, for God’s sake. What in the name of God makes you think I know my arse from my elbow in this town?’

Instead, I said ‘Non…parlo…italiano.’

I used to pass the time making up fake Salon travel headlines with a friend of mine. His favorite was:
‘Under An Inky Sardinian Sky, A Mysterious Stranger Made Me A Woman.’

Now that I’m here in Sardinia it seems even sillier. I feel lanky and pale beside the compact natives. I can barely fit in the shower stalls without bumping my elbows as I shampoo. When we drive through the old towns in our teensy rented Fiat, the wing mirrors graze houses on both sides of the street. Teenage girls stroll ahead of the car, arms linked.

Yes, I’m turning Texan as I note the smallness, the cuteness, the cheapness of everything here in Yurp. But it’s hard not to. Dinner for three�Camparis, antipasti, pastas, fish, panna cottas, coffees, wine, brandy�is less than sixty bucks. They even humor my parents by serving cappuccinos after dinner; a barbarism. And the beaches are nothing like the frigid Atlantic of my childhood, where mortification of the (white, goosepimpled) flesh was daily penance. Here, Italians, Dutch, and Belgians baste themselves in the sun, and every day is a perfect 82 degrees with a breeze. The water is warm and waist-deep no matter how far you doggy-paddle. To compensate, I caught a cold the first day, just for old time’s sake. It wouldn’t be a holiday without shivering and sneezing on the beach.

‘Ah, Irlanda,’ people say with a happy nod when they discover where we are from. In Europe, there is unspoken (and unfair) approval for not being English, especially when they have already assumed the worst. No one here speaks English, but it turns out my Spanish is good enough to produce a mangled dialect that they pretend to understand. I can also read Italian, though not yet without moving my lips and practicing Italian gestures. Today there was a mournful newspaper article that discussed emigration from the island. The photo was captioned: ‘A young Sardinian emigrant at the Fiat factory in Turin.’ Turin is a few hundred miles away on the Italian mainland. My mother, lonely for two daughters who insist on gallivanting on the other side of the world, scoffed.

Back in New York, a week here had seemed luxurious. Friday to Friday, then to Dublin and back to London. But Italy is set up for proper vacations. Apartments rent from Saturday to Saturday, two weeks minimum, often a month. You can see it in the faces of people lying out by the pool, untroubled by flights and arrangements. All they worry about is whether to get the pizza menu or the restaurant menu. Instead, I’ve saddled myself with catching three buses to the airport on the other side of the island, and because it’s midweek I must leave a day early to do so. This means my week here turned out to be Sunday to Wednesday, or barely the length of a respectable trip to the Hamptons. And I haven’t managed to relax yet. I plough up and down the pool for exercise every morning, and do yoga in the shade. I slather myself in factor 45 sunscreen and then lecture my mother about wearing a hat. I rush through book chapters like lengths of the pool, calculating each book as half a pound I won’t have to carry in my pack. I make little lists of phone calls to make and things to buy.

I hope that when I’ve lived out of my backpack for a few months, I’ll have grown out of this urge to schedule briskly and grown back into my native European dolce far niente ways. Life’s too short to be lived on American time.

It’s my first night in Sardinia. I was fifteen the last time I went on holiday with my parents, and I’m regressing already.

I booked the flights online without consultation when I realized Mum and Dad can’t really use the Internet yet. We flew Ryanair, which is famous for pioneering no-frills flying in Europe-Dublin to London for six quid, and the like. But they know how to gouge you on hidden extras, so in the end all you get is an ascetic thrill and a bill the same size as British Airways. The flights from Shannon to Dublin and then Dublin to Sardinia were an hour apart�plenty of time for a connection, I thought, not knowing that Ryanair thinks connections are your problem. Weeks of family fretting were reported by my sister Caroline, until I gave in and spent an hour on the phone booking new flights.

I joined my parents at Stansted an hour and a half before takeoff, to find them panicking that we would miss the flight. This was well-founded. Stansted was a zoo. We literally sprinted to the gate to discover that our plane had not actually landed in London yet. Signs warned us that the airport staff would not tolerate drunkenness�this is England�but Dad recklessly produced miniature bottles of brandy and gin to sidestep the Ryanair bar fees.

At Alghero, late, we discovered our guesthouse had no street name, simply directions to get a taxi to the nearest village and call from the phone booth opposite the church. Which did not accept coins or credit cards. I went to the nearest cafe to buy a targetta per telefono, sounding like a drunken Kerry farmer speaking French. The impossibly handsome bartender grinned as he produced a choice of cards, and I glanced at my parents faffing around with a map and a torch outside the door. What is this strange, familiar feeling?

Ah, adolescence. Here we go again.

The charming Rem Reynolds gives me the address of his friend Porter, who has a gig writing for Cambodia Daily in Pnomh Penh. I write to ask his advice on my upcoming trip, and include a link to this site. His reply is filled with Southern tact:

‘I checked out your web site. Seems like you’re
having a time figuring out what to bring. I’d
recommend visiting an Army-Navy surplus store. The
gear is cheaper and less flashy, making you less of a
mark for harassment (not serious harassment, just
would-be guides, drivers, salesmen, etc). Just a
thought, probably too late.’

I’m cringing. Shoe-shopping is a tic, a form self-medication more benign than bourbon. The grail: a sexy summer shoe that doesn’t create blisters like puff adders and that makes me feel like a cross between Audrey Hepburn and Amelia Earhart. It’s just a distraction from the bureaucracy of trip planning, and from my current perch here on this glamorous little rock, it seems entirely forgiveable. But yes, it must seem utterly daft to the likes of Porter, writing from a town where people have nothing.

My Swiss Army convertible backpack arrived yesterday. I already had a backpack, but as you can tell from my previous entry, the travel vaccines are causing odd symptoms. Admittedly, my new backpack is delightful. Max suggested I just get a cheap bag and fill it with $20 bills for the same effect, but then I would have missed the spiffy snap-off daypack, the exciting compartments everywhere, the satisfying clicks of straps that don’t seem to do anything. It has a handle I can pull, and hidden backstraps and a hip belt. And it’s red. I will be the coolest kid on the Ko Sanh Road.

All the same, don’t get drunk and go on the camping gear website. I really didn’t need a clothesline, space blanket, mosquito net, compass, cup, spoon, torch, three pairs of Cosabella knickers, and an umbrella too.

UPDATE: The box just arrived from REI.com. It also contains a sunhat, padlock, travel wallet, and a compass/altimeter/weather forecast watch that’s about twice the size of my skinny wrists. My God. No more martinis for Dervala.