Countries We've Visited
Walk the Earth Slowly...
Four years ago my wife & I met a couple who had traveled around the world. Before that, such a trip had never occurred to us. Because we both love to travel, however, we knew immediately that we had to do the same. And so finally we're here.
Update (January 2006):
We're back in the San Diego now, eleven months after we left. I'm still working to get all of my photo albums and essays ready to publish. Stay tuned!Our Route (roughly):
Itinerary:
We left Los Angeles on February 15, 2005. Here is the list of countries we are planning (at this time) to visit or have visited:
Japan
New Zealand - [North Island][South Island]
Thailand - [Bangkok, Ko Samui] [Chiang Mai]
Cambodia
Dubai
Turkey
Bulgaria
Romania
Hungary
Poland
Czech Republic
AustriaSlovenia
Italy
France
New York City
We're starting in Los Angeles, and our first city back in the
States
is New York. Who knows what we'll be doing or where we'll be after
that, but we will be going back to San Diego to visit our friends and
pick up our stuff.
How? Why? (Common Questions):
Q: Why are you doing this?
A: We're on a mission from God. Seriously. We think. This is sort of our vision quest to learn why we're on this planet. We sure hope to know more than we do now by the time we're done.
Q: How much money are you taking?
A: We don't feel comfortable giving this information right now. We do plan on providing our budget after we return so people can see how surprisingly inexpensive it is to take long-term journeys. We now have enough money for our trip, which is a huge blessing from God because we were kind of stressed about it. As always, there is no need to worry.
Adam Heine wrote an excellent post on generosity and people's reasons for giving. In light of that wisdom, we decided that we will still accept donations.
We have a PayPal account (so you can use your credit card) set up in order to do this. If you hate PayPal, or have trouble using it, but you still want to donate to our trip, contact us and we'll work it out.
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An even better way that you can help us (and it doesn't cost money) is by letting us know if you live in one of the countries (or you know somebody there) we will be visiting. We love to meet new people and this is one of the things that we are most looking forward to. Any favors of hospitality we will gladly return if you ever visit San Diego!
Q: Where are you going to stay?
A: Hostels, campgrounds, new friend's houses. We're also looking into some really cool networks like CouchSurfing and Hospitality Club. These are both great concepts and fit perfectly with our belief that humans should have the freedom to live wherever they want and that all of us should welcome pilgrims on the road. When we are stationary, we do the same for other people all the time, and we love it.
Q: How much stuff are you bringing with you?
A: As little as possible. Rolf Potts wrote a book about long term travel called Vagabonding and it inspired us to avoid the common trap of isolating ourselves from our experience by bringing too much of home with us. So we're basically just bringing some clothes, a camera (+ gear), a book or two, and a sleeping bag.
Q: Are you going to keep an online journal?
A: Yes! I've been blogging for over a year at Sacking Rome and Kaoru just started blogging at Kaoru's Notepad. She writes both in English and in Japanese.
We also take a lot of pictures and we host the ones we like online in categorized web albums. Our photo albums can be found here.
Q: Are you buying Round the World (RTW) tickets?
A: No. We debated about this a lot but we want to have the freedom to change our plans whenever we want to. It looks like buying one tickets as we go is actually going to be cheaper. This way, we also don't have to commit a lot of cash up front.
Q: What are you going to do when you get back?
A: We don't know. Kaoru will likely continue her jewelry business. She is also an interior designer so she may take that up again.
I would love to be able to make a living as a writer but that will take some time to get off the ground. I'm also deeply interested in economics, international relations and social justice in Asia, specifically in Japan and its neighbors.
In the meantime, I've decided I'm not going to work for somebody else in technology. I wasn't put on this earth to sit in front of a computer.
We also aren't sure where we'll live. San Diego isn't a bad town but it's also losing it's personality to sprawl and over-valued real estate. I am considering grad school at UCSD. That would keep us here for a few more years. We'll see.
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Ray's wife Kaoru is a jewelry designer with wonderful designs. She is also blogs here.
All Images & Content Copyright Ray Grieselhuber 2003-2005