Can you ever go home again? For most expats, home is a humble little word filled with a wealth of meaning.

It took me a long time to get used to driving in Grand Cayman. The traffic, the lack of rules, the state of the roads, the chaos — it was a shock after the relative calm of Australia. For the first year that I lived on the island, I would simply get behind the wheel and hope for the best, knowing it was entirely realistic that I could be in an accident that day.

The beauty of travel is that it encourages us to do things that we never thought possible. Bungee jumping in New Zealand? Okay. Eating fried spiders in Cambodia? Sure. Swimming with great white sharks in South Africa? Of course. That’s why lizard phobic India Lloyd ended up visiting a iguana farm full of thousands of the scaly little creatures.

Recently, I contributed my first post to Back in a Bit. It was an introductory piece with the aim of establishing my voice as a contributor and giving a rough idea of my background as an Australian living in the Cayman Islands. Never had I imagined that it would be contentious. Never had I imagined that my normal life would be considered a hotbed of self-indulgence and conceit.

Mention the words “tropical island” and most people conjure images of towering palms, sugar-white sands and sapphire waters, writes India Lloyd.