The Dream

written prior to our trip

We love traveling and think there is lot that we can learn and contribute through this hobby. On our travels we have met, from time to time, some people who are not just on a holiday but who are traveling for an extended period. Traveling for an extended period has a number of advantages over a 2 or 3 week holiday. If you are in a country for a longer time you have time to get to the out of the way places. And if you do this you have a much better chance to get a real feel for the country and the people's character. Realizing this, we have, for some time, been looking for a time when we could try to travel over an extended period.

And it finally going to happen.

Traveling, just like any other life choice, has effects. Effects on family, the environment, the culture of the country are just a few that come to mind. We are trying to plan our trip so that wherever we can we can contribute something positive. This has led us to a few decisions about our trip. We are planning to go as much as possible by bicycle. Bicycle is the greatest transportation. The only effect it has on unrenewable resources is to increase the size of leg muscles. To keep in contact with family and friends we plan to update our web page regularly so you can follow us. And as for affecting the cultures we'll bump into we are planning to help rather than break them down. Five months is a long time to be only traveling And as traveling can be a rather selfish thing we hope to alleviate that by doing some volunteer work. We have been working with Dan's aunt who is the director of Service Link (the volunteer arm of the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee, CRWRC) It looks as if we are going to be able to do some work in Cambodia and and will stop by the CRWRC offices in Laos as well. For more details about our volunteer work click here. Also in terms of cultural interaction we hope to be respectful and to only leave behind the effects of our conversations.

We take the issue of ethical and fair traveling very seriously. Above we listed some specific ways we are trying to minimize the negative effects of our traveling. For more information on responsible traveling please check out Tourism Concern, a British group that deals with these issues. One of the resources they have on their web site which we found particularly interesting was A Traveler's Code (22 kb - PDF file).

If you have questions about the philosophy or our trip or any comments about our dream let us know. We are always interested in what you have to say.