Monkeying Around at Sea

Angela Coe was born in Surrey, England. As a small child, she was attracted to the outside; the animals and plants. She longed to grow up and travel. Leaving school at fifteen, she worked in London while living with her parents. She then obtained a job as a holiday organiser in Deal, Kent and then later moved to a job as a house matron in Broadstairs. Still searching for the way of life that she wanted, she went to Norway and learned that other young people were moving around by hitchhiking and working. At nineteen years of age, her real life started. For four years she hitchhiked and worked while travelling, first through Europe: washing dishes, child-minding, picking grapes and office work. She then went through, Turkey, Iran and Iraq, mostly doing office work or teaching English. Then through Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Upon running out of land in Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon), she hitched a lift on a cargo boat to China, Hong Kong and later many countries in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. In Burma, she made the return trip to England. Since then, the author has travelled to many parts of the world and is now living in Sri Lanka.