Andy Richardson: Pack up your troubles, they're coming too

Those are the icons that figure in my mind's eye when I think about holidays. Actually, they're not. They're the icons that figure in my mind's eye when I think about really bad holidays.

At other times, I think of cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway and lounging in a Malaysian hammock, of eating three star food at Ledoyen, off the Champs Elysee, in Paris, and of being eyed-up by a supermodel at a Milanese hotel. Those, as you'll already have deduced, are the pictures that illuminate my mind when I think of really good holidays.

Summer is approaching fast and it's time to think about packing my Tumi suitcase, digging out my Paul Smith passport holder and heading for the airport. Being someplace else is one of life's great joys. The opportunity to learn about new cultures excites me more than the release of the new Dexys album, more than a plate of expertly seasoned waygu steak with triple-cooked chips. The opportunity to see the world through other people's eyes is as illuminating as a 100 watt lightbulb that's throwing out 1,600 lumens of incandescent light in a dark room. It's as captivating as a John le Carré espionage novel that doesn't give you the 'reveal' until page 364.

The world has never been smaller. No, let's back it up there and unpack that dreary metaphor. The world isn't smaller at all; it's just easier to circumnavigate in an era of cheap travel and digital communications.

Some might hanker for a caravan break in Wales or follow-the-hedonist-herd for a no-holds-barred pow wow in Southern Europe. Others cruise aquamarine waters in big ships, jet off to five-star lux in Dubai or go DIY to the arid plains of Tanzania. From Abu Dhabi, Abuja and Accra to Yaren, Yerevan and Zagreb, the world is full of high octane thrills.

At the last count, I'd visited 55 countries. The weirdest was probably Djibouti, a small nation located in the Horn of Africa that's bordered by Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somali. It's a nation of resourcefulness, where life is eked out in the harshest conditions. The people are so impoverished that they make sculptures out of salt and sell them to tourists.

The most beautiful location was the Galapagos Islands, where a sea lion almost tapped me on the shoulder while I was snorkelling with penguins, as though to say: "Hey, buster, forget about penguins and turtles, seals are the real deal."

In Galapagos, blue-footed-boobies – they're a bird, not an ornately-garlanded woman's appendage – do mating dances by the side of the path, oblivious to and unafraid of human visitors. It's like a Northern Soul shuffle with the brightest, bluest feet in Christendom.

But whether your pleasure is beach or wellness, city break or ecotourism, when all's said and done, there are only two types of holiday. There are good ones and there are bad ones.

For now, we'll dwell on the experience we've all endured: the holiday from hell. I've had three. And on two occasions it would have been both easier and more preferable to simply write out a cheque for £1,000 before dousing it in lighter fuel and taking a match to it.

The first is but a dim and distant memory. As a boy, my family took us to North Wales for a week's excitement. There were no sticks of rock, no buckets and spades and no 'wish you were here' postcards. We lasted approximately three hours before I became acutely ill and our red Nissan Cherry was pointed back towards the Black Country for an emergency admission at Dudley Guest Hospital.

A trip to Madagascar was similarly bad: my face crunched into a concrete road following an eight foot fall, which led to two days in a rural hospital and the re-attachment of torn-off top lip. I still have the scars.

But so much for bad holidays. It's time to get jiggy. It's time to think about the good. And we've got a whole week to remember them.