I've been blessed to travel quite a bit with my stage work.
Last year I travelled to Uganda, Switzerland, Germany and China with Mike van Graan's When Swallows Cry. In terms of holidays, I visit Ghana (my father's home) every two years and we try to travel within SA as a family, as well as in Lesotho (my mother's home).
My first childhood holiday was to St Lucia, KZN, with my family. What a gem of a place - SA's first World Heritage Site [now known as the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, it was declared a WHS in 1999].
It has game and birdlife, beaches to die for, lush coastal forests, and wetlands - which my dad learnt to respect after almost being washed away in one! And of course, the leatherback turtles, which are so cute I wanted to take one home.
My first trip abroad, technically, was to Lesotho. I was born in France and travelled through Europe as an infant.
I don't remember much about Lesotho, as I was small, except the magnificent Maluti mountains, my grandmother's ginger beer and how odd it was no-one spoke French.
The most remote destination I've been to was Nanjing, China. It took two days of travel: planes, layovers, bus rides, and the fastest trains I've ever been on.
You can't use WhatsApp in Nanjing, China. It just stops working!
It literally feels like travelling to the end of the world - not only because of the distance from home but also because when you're there ... drum roll ... you can't use WhatsApp! It just stops working!
And once you accept the fact that you've fallen off the planet - at least in terms of communication, though rice wine helps you along with that - you have to navigate the language and the food.
After a few fails, however, you learn to always have a local order food for you. Always.
Once I get to my destination, I love to travel by train. It's a great way to see a country and observe its people. The trains we travelled on through Switzerland and Europe have the most breathtaking views and some of the characters on the trains and at the stations are fascinating.
My worst travel experience was spending the night at a B&B in the middle of winter in the Northern Cape. The heaters didn't work and all my wife [comedian Tumi Morake] and I had to keep us warm was a tiny blanket and a hot water bottle, which froze when it came into contact with our arctic bed.
I think the town was Hanover, but my wife now calls it Siberia. I also hate packing. Is there anything worse? Someone needs to design a robot that can do this. Seriously.
The oddest thing I've experienced while travelling was having prostitutes soliciting me for business in Tanzania. I was there for a wedding and we were at a hotel bar celebrating after the reception - an after-party of sorts.
Suddenly these women joined our table and started getting very touchy feely. All I'm going to say is had we not been with a local, we might have been in trouble.
I'd really like to go to Brazil during Carnival. That seems like the only place you can go to and party like you never have before. Like if you partied there, you literally would never need to party again.
• Mpho Osei-Tutu stars in 'The Dead Tinder Society' at the Pieter Toerien Theatre, Montecasino, until August 25.
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