WHEN Ian Dow set off for a year travelling around the world, he wasn’t expecting to almost drown in the Cook Islands, do a 450-foot bungee jump in New Zealand and get engaged in Thailand, but that’s just life on the road.

Ian back in Greenock, and, inset, with fiancee Tak.

Ian (34) is back home in Greenock after his 12-month adventure which he decided to do after being made redundant from his job in the electronics industry.

He explained: “I wasn’t sure what line of work to go into and travelling always appealed to me. I had never really done it. I was envious of students who take a year out; I went right into work after school. The redundancy money gave me a chance to do it.”

Ian concedes it was also a chance to reduce his mortgage but adds: “Everything’s not about material things. I want to get as much experience in life as possible; see as many places, do as many things. I certainly don’t regret doing what I did.”

A keen Morton fan, Ian is sad he missed the ‘Ton winning the league and beating Kilmarnock in the Scottish Cup. He would have been at the momentous France v Scotland match in Paris as well. Ian was back in time for Morton’s match against Buckie Thistle at Cappielow on Saturday and received a special mention in the programme and on the tannoy. He said: “That was a complete surprise. It was a fantastic day for me.”

Ian went to 10 countries and started by travelling coast to coast across the USA. By the sixth week he was in the idyllic Cook Islands in the South Pacific where he would face a nightmarish situation that almost made him head home.

Ian had gone out kayaking with two Swedes at a reef. They had gone beyond the reef and the Swedes had left him behind when he discovered that his kayak had a hole in it – it proceeded to sink and Ian, who had no life jacket, stayed with it for 90 minutes trying to keep it afloat. He recalls: “There was nobody around. I shouted for help. Nobody came. I gave up and swam for two hours to shore. I really did think I was going to die.”

Even when he reached shore, Ian had to trek bare foot for three hours over wilderness, much of it sharp stones and coral, to find a settlement. He had bits of coral stuck in his legs for weeks – “some witchdoctor-type guy pulled the shards out in Fiji two weeks later which meant I could walk properly again.”

Ian had hired a motorbike that day too and the key had gone down with the kayak. He hired a second one but through fatigue and shock pressed the accelerator instead of the brake going into a corner and crashed it. He escaped with scrapes and bruises. “I thought about coming home at that point,” said Ian.

But he carried on to New Zealand, where he stayed for two months, then had three months in Australia and five months in Thailand. He also visited Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma and Laos.

“I didn’t rush the countries,” he said. “I covered a lot of ground in each one although for the first six months I didn’t stop in any town for longer than four days. There are so many people doing the same thing. It’s like a big tourist path.”

Ian qualified in open water diving during his trip when he stayed three days and nights living the dream on a vessel 100 miles offshore on the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia.

He counts two experiences in New Zealand as ‘highlights’ -- a 16,000-foot skydive, and, the previous day, a 450-foot bungee jump – the biggest in Australasia involving eight and half seconds in free fall. Ian said: “That was the most terrifying thing I have done.

Ironically Ian arrived in Thailand in need of a break. “I decided I needed a holiday from travelling and spent around six weeks at Koh Samui.” He had just come up with a plan to finish the adventure by travelling on the trans Siberia rail route through to Eastern Europe, when he met Tak, a 20-year-old Thai girl, at a nightclub, and ended up staying in Thailand for the remaining five months, travelling around the country with Tak and getting engaged to her. She was on hand to help him recover when he endured major dental surgery and had a cist removed from his back. Ian visited the village Tak comes from and met her family. He said: “It was a chance to see Thai culture out with tourist areas. I was the only tourist in the village.”

Ian said: “I had been with Tak for so long, five months in total in many areas in Thailand, and we realised that we loved each other very much. It was very distressing for us both having to leave each other in Bangkok but hopefully it will only be a few months before we are together again. In the meantime we'll have to make do with our daily phonecalls to each other.”

He added: “I am excited about the prospect of Tak coming to Scotland, meeting my family, and for us to build a life together. I already feel part of her family and it’s like I have five new sisters and a brother, and a mum and dad, all of whom I have met and we get on like a house on fire. The language barrier is a bit tricky though but as Tak's English is constantly improving she has been acting as my translator.”

Ian has had enough travelling for now and is looking for a job. He kept a blog of his escapades all year which attracted loyal readers across the world and he intends to keep that going just now. He said: “Having met Tak, the story isn’t finished yet.”

LINK Ian’s blog

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Ian back in Greenock, and, inset, with fiancee Tak.