But a mosquito has put paid to those plans for a while.
At the end of a four-month stint on an aid project in Ghana, he headed for London, where he planned to join the British Army.
While he had religiously taken his anti-malaria pills in Africa, he stopped once he was in the United Kingdom.
"Within two weeks of stopping the pills, I was feeling nauseous and dizzy; my head kept spinning.
"I went to stay with relations near Oxford and they took me straight to the GP.
"From there, I was immediately referred to the infectious disease ward at the John Radcliffe Hospital.
One test result was all they needed to put me into intensive care with renal failure."
He spent three weeks in hospital in Oxford before he was allowed to return to New Zealand last month under the watchful eye of his mother, Wakatipu Trails Trust chief executive Kaye Parker.
Mrs Parker flew straight from a Cure Kids meeting in Fiji to London to be at his bedside.
Although traumatised by the whole frightening experience of seeing her son so gravely ill and going through all the drama of blood transfusions, Mrs Parker did not take long to find out which doctors had been to Queenstown and to get them all fired up for a repeat visit to the resort.
Now that he is safely home, is Mr Parker's view of travel, and travel to Africa particularly, as jaundiced as his skin? Not a bit of it.
He said: "Whatever you do, take the malaria pills and keep taking them, even when you are out of the danger area.
"People say the side effects of the drugs are unpleasant, but I took doxycycline and had no problems.
"And the effects of malaria are way worse.
"People there were pretty nonchalant about malaria, but it's a killer: more than a million people a year die of it."
He loved Ghana, where he worked on a project building classrooms for a school in Mamfe, a hill town of about 80,000 people.
The job was organised through Projects Abroad, which also arranged a host family.
James was happy to find himself being hosted by the richest host family in the village.
His family not only had a clapped-out Nissan, which was always breaking down, but it also had electricity and running water - sometimes.
He could have a shower once a week and lost plenty of weight on the one-meal-a-day regime.
Not that the food in Ghana sounds that appetising.
While Mr Parker was lucky to be living with a family who had a chicken farm so chicken was eaten about three times a week, many of the other meals involved rolling up bits of dough and swabbing up soupy mixtures with them.
Mr Parker's description of fufu puts you right off: "A cassava and corn dough that looks rather like snot and must be swallowed rather than chewed."
Yum.
It sounds grim, but he really loved it.
The volunteers were mostly young and came from all over the world.
He was the lone Kiwi, but he made many friends.
Entertainment in Mamfe centred around Mama's bar, where the Irish volunteers would always have their instruments and voices ready for a singing session, and quiz nights.
With every weekend off, the volunteers had plenty of time to explore Ghana.
"It's a great place: pretty safe, really, although I was robbed by a cop.
"Apparently, that's a pretty rare event, as there isn't really that much corruption in Ghana."
He spent his last weekend in Ghana down at the coast visiting a fishing village during the off-season.
The locals were all relaxing, virtually comatose after overdoing their consumption of the local firewater known as akptashi, a vicious, repulsive brew made of palm oil whose alcohol content can be anything from 40% to 80%.
At 20c a shot, it is a cheap way for the fishermen to see out the off-season.
That weekend at the coast was fantastic apart from his being bitten alive by mosquitoes.
And one mosquito in particular.
