Travelling a bit later in life has many advantages, a savings account (to complement and underwrite the credit card) & sensibilities (in the relative sense) immediately spring to mind, but probably the best of all the benefits is the extra contacts you have the world over.
I owe everyone I met last year – both those who planned to meet me and those for whom I was a surprise - a huge bunch of thanks.
Your generosity - which I experienced in so many places and in so many forms – has made my last twelve months simply incredible; You all made my travelling experience so memorable (and doable).
So now, as I prepare to return to a more settled and productive life, I am reflecting on all that has happened while on ‘the long way home,’ (having left my old life in Dunedin (NZ) in order to search out a new life somewhere), and I am finding that even by way of summary, I have a lot to write about …
About the Goodbyes
I have said way too many goodbyes this past year. If there was a downside to travelling the world over at the pace that I chose to, it was the consistency with which I had to say goodbye to good people who’s company had not nearly grown tired of.
I would dearly love to pluck all the great people I met last year from the places you now occupy and gather you all my current location, so that I could introduce you to each other. Ideally we would then grow very old together, traversing life's highs and lows as a big extended family, while simultaneously doing all we could to be a positive force for the cause of Good in our world.
About the Favour
As I began to say above, I met with so much unexpected and undeserved favour while on the road last year. Thank you so much to all those who took me in as a stranger, a friend, or simply a friend-of-a-friend, and proceeded to treat me like royalty. I am full of cherished experiences and memories because of the kindness & charity you extended to me. Spending so much time in other peoples scenes can be exhausting, I am both grateful to those who shared their space with me, and who did so much to make me as comfortable as I could be.
I could not have had the good times that I did have, nor the opportunities to be refreshed through the familiarity that come from family homes and friendly faces, had I not been connected to so many social networks (personal, professional & spiritual). The hospitality you showed me through opening up your homes to me and playing tour guide for your local areas greatly enhanced by travels. It also helped enormously in keeping my costs down. Thank you for being so kind and generous.
About the Money
Travelling for a year without engaging in paid work is expensive – especially in lost earnings. As stated above, the trip was made much more affordable by the generosity of the many kind folk who took me in while I was voluntarily homeless.
I need to also publicly thank the New Zealand Dollar, which, through the course of 2009, managed to shirk both the struggles it was having in the first quarter & the dire predictions of worse to come, and climb back to being around 75 US cents by the time I reached the Americas. (My first exchange into US Dollars was made at a rate below 50 US cents, so effectly, the bounceback performance of the NZD saved me a stack of space-bucks, for which I am now expressing thanks.)
Since returning to Australia and engaging in paid work again, I have sat down and tallied up (working in my preferred currency) the total cost of my travels in terms of the money I needed to out lay. As such I can now reveal that I spent just under half-a-billion đồng on my year abroad, which was only slightly more than I had set aside.
About the Blogging
Thank you to all those who pestered me to the point at which I promised to produce this travel blog before setting off. I am really glad that I did take the time to record my experiences in this way.
I found that needing to think about how to tell the story of each little epoch of my year – usually several weeks after the events – really helped to enrich the experiences of each country at the time that I was present, and to remind me what an amazing year I was in the middle of as returned to the experiences to create and upload the (belated) blog post that described them.
So much happened that is so easily forgotten. Now, because I was pestered, I have this electronic journal to remember the highlights of a whole year of travel, and a way to easily share these events with others.
Below are a couple of images (created using the website www.wordle.net) that contain the words I used most often in composing this travel blog (excluding the common words that carry no meaning). The bigger the word, the more oft it was used.
(Of course, for the sake of accuracy, all the words above & below should be within parentheses.)
About the English (&/or My Lack of Foreign Languages)
Another big shout out must be sent to all those wonderful people I travelled alongside who:
chose to speak English (it not being their primary language) in my presence so as to include me in the conversations;
&/or,
translated my desires & ponderings from English into the language of the predominant culture for me.
Thank you to these same people for so sitting patiently through my long-winded explanation as to why secondary languages are so scarce in the Australian population (which on reflection was just a really lengthy excuse for being as ignorant and self-absorbed as we actually are).
About the Deep & Meaningfuls
Thanks to all those who shared their hearts and minds with me. These exchanges, none of which I posted for the world to read about on this website, were actually the most wonderful things that I encountered last year, and as such, I really want to thank you for your openness and the honestly with which you spoke.
One of the hopes I had expressed when setting out on this journey was to engage in such conversations; I am deeply grateful to those who helped realise this hope. CS Lewis (creator of the Narnia children stories and great Christian thinker) once wrote these true words: “you don’t know your own theology until you can explain it in plain language’. By sharing your ideas and your life with me, and allowing me to share with you, I have come much closer to being able to explain the faith that I have in Jesus, which was significantly bolstered and deepened during the four years that I recently spent studying theology, such that I can express aspects of it in ordinary English.
About the Music
Listed below is the music I chose to form the soundtrack to various legs of my journey:
Crooked Fingers, Forfeit/Fortune (Album) Turkey/GreeceThe Killers, Day & Age (Album) GuernseyU2, No Line on the Horizon (Album) New York CityBloc Party, Intimacy (Album) CubaNick Lovell, Imaginary Boy (Album) St LuciaFanfarlo, Reservoir (Album) NicaraguaAthlete, Black Swan (Album) El SalvadorDepeche Mode, Playing The Angel (Album) Guatemala/MexicoBon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago (Album) AustraliaBon Iver, Blood Bank (EP) AustraliaKina Grannis, Stairwells (Album) AustraliaJonsi, Go (Album) AustraliaArt vs. Science, Art vs. Science (EP) Australia
Listed below are the tunes that chose me:
Cold Play, Viva La Vida (Single) NZ/AustraliaMystery Jets Young Love (Single) NZ/AustraliaBlack Eyed Peas, I Got a Feeling (Single) CubaAventura, Por un Segundo (Single) Cuba/Central AmericaMakano, Te Amo (Single) Cuba/Central AmericaMakano, Dejame Entrar (Single) Cuba/Central AmericaMana, Manda una Senal (Single) Cuba/Central AmericaRussell Leonce, Culture of Love (Album) Saint Vincent
I very intentionally chose to listened to one album per location, systematically moving from one to another as I crossed international borders, in the hope of creating musical memory prompts for some of the places I visited last year. I must say the early results of this little brain experiment are very encouraging, listening to the albums again this year has caused me to recall the feel & mood of the places I learned to love those tunes in. I think it's a really powerful way of encapsulating and preserving memories that you don't wish to lose with the passing of time.
About the Flavour [Food]
Thinking back through the various cuisines in which I partook while travelling has resulted in the compilation of the following menu, which is entitled “The 2009 Perfect Eating Day”:
BreakfastSpicy Noodle Soup (Vietnam)Vietnamese Coffee – Iced or White (Vietnam)Morning TeaArabic Coffee (Palestine)Swiss Chocolate (Switzerland)LunchFresh Bread and Hummus (Palestine)Caribbean Passion Jamba Juice (California)Afternoon TreatA Fresh Coconut (Jamaica)Gelato (Rome)Pre-Dinner DrinkMichelada (El Salvador)Cuba Libre (Cuba)DinnerCeviche (Citrus Raw Fish Dish – Peru)Tõna Beer (Nicaragua)DessertChilli & Tamarind Ice Block (El Salvador)Night CapAged Rum (Guatemala/Nicaragua)Cuban Cigar (Cuba)
About my Favourite Accommodations
These be the favoutite places I used to rest my weary head when the sunshine had run short and the adventure of the day had wound down:
Traveller's Cave Pension (Goreme, Turkey).Colors (Rome, Italy)."The Schlössli" Le Rüdli [YWAM base] (Einigen, Switzerland).Hostal Los Volcanes (Guatemala City, Guatemala).Rocking J's (Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica).Managua Backpackers Inn (Managua, Nicaragua)Totoco Eco-Lodge (Ometepe, Nicaragua)
And all the homes of friends in which I was welcomed as a squatter for a while.
About the Global Lost and Found Department
I got an incredible number of lost possessions back while travelling, often under pretty miraculous circumstances:
List of things I lost that came back:
WalletBibleBackpack (containing a camera, computer, $1000 cash, passport, and other minor valuables).Thongs
List of things I lost that didn’t come back:
SunglassesCap (x2)
I learned not to panic until I was sure I was sure I was sure that there was no possible way to get my belongings back.
About the Protection Plan
I must send out a large scale thank you to the Spirit of God who protected me, and led me to so many wonderful people and beautiful experiences, while out of the safety of my own environment. At no point did I find myself in real danger, and throughout the whole time I was on the road I experienced no more than a handful of minor health complaints, none of which prevented me from doing what I had planned for each day.
I was overwhelmed on more than one occasion by the goodness and nearness of my faithful Father God, who I know through Jesus the Christ. Truly there is no place on earth where you can escape His Spirit.
About the Carbon Emissions
I'm avoiding all calculator for fear of learning that I may never be allowed to take another motorised mode of transportation for the rest of my life (on account of the number of flights, buses, boats & taxi’s I have now used). I reckon about a thousand people would have been responsible for steering me on my chosen course last year as I sat within their vehicles.
About the Travel Bug
Travelling as I have done has proven once-and-for-all that I am not really a traveller; I got the urge to return to single location routine in familiar surrounds well before the end of my scheduled journey. And even with a normal life now just around the corner, I have little desire to get the backpack on my back again.
I confirmed what already suspected to be true of myself. My life is beautiful & fully satisfying when I have people to know and love (to be known by and loved) around me. Even in the midst of a stunning & exotic location, I found that if I didn't have anyone to share the experience with, the moment was often flat & sometimes unpleasant.
So then, in considering my social needs alongside my appreciation for beautiful places, what I desire most is:
1) people and place; followed by
2) people in no place; followed by
3) place with no people;
all of which is better than no people or place.
In other words, I am just as content & happy living in the one place in good relationships as I am on the road experiencing new things. The travel bug passed straight through my system.
About the Consequences / Outcomes
I believe my last year of life has been somewhat inefficient in terms of making the world a better place (I believe you can achieve more by applying yourself to your local environment), but rich in producing stories that I will be telling for the rest of my life and, most importantly, that have brought about the change in my disposition that I knew I needed.
In my last setting I had become stale and dulled. This past year has been a success in that it has caused me shake loose the apathy that had a grip on my spirit thereby helping me to become motivated to make my life count again. Put simply, my interest in being constructively involved in the lives of other people has returned in full. I want to do the good that I can do, while I have the time and energy.
I also have a renewed zest for life. I have the desire to learn and contribute.
I want to learn new sports, how to dance, how to surf, another language, a musical instrument, and more. (Not in that order and certainly not all in the next few months, but over the duration of a well planned & lived life.)
I want my life to count again, and that for me means doing what I can to make the world the sort of place its' Creator always intended it to be: A place of justice, fairness, equality, acceptance & love. I believe this is what Jesus expected (& expects) his followers to pursue with their lives when he encouraged them to 'build for the Kingdom' that he himself established and reigns over as the King.
Travelling has been good for me; It has renewed my sense of purpose and love for life (both my own life and the lives of others).
Again, thanks to all those who tagged along with me.
