Steena and James Anderson - Round-the-World Travelers

1. When did you go on your RTW trip?
   January 2005-December 2005

2. How old were you when you took this trip?
   35

3. Including your air ticket and other expenses (from accommodation to souvenir-buying), about how much did your trip cost?
   more than we planned!

4. Nationality
   USA

5. Where do you live now?
   Seattle, USA

6. Occupation
   
   Before your trip: Program analyst/network engineer
   
   
   Now: still looking
   
   

7. How did your travels affect your career when you got back?
   Not sure yet. Still looking for a job.

8. What is the route you took/places you visited?
   cross-country USA trip (Washington DC to Seattle) Mexico-Europe (Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Gibraltar, Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Czech, Hungary, Germany, Denmark) Fiji-New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Nepal, Thailand-Seattle

9. Why did you decide to take this trip? What got you into this type of travel, and/or influenced you to go?
   Finished school in DC and decided to take a "small trip" before relocating back to Seattle. Deciding where to go turned from "small trip" to RTW.

10. Out of all your experiences traveling around the world, what was the:
    
    • Best Moment
      either eating crepes in Oaxaca or sitting in some hot springs in New Zealand during a freak spring snow storm

    • Worst Moment
      having everything stolen in Mexico

    • Biggest Hurdle, Obstacle or Difficulty?
      worrying our stuff would get stolen again

    • Biggest surprise?
      how easy RTW really is

11. Who is the most memorable person you met on your trip and why?
    the people we meet were so varied and interesting its hard to pick just one.

12. How much planning and preparing did you do?
    Winged it a lot

13. What was your favorite piece of gear?
    The backsafe. After all my stuff was stolen, the backsafe gave us a sense of security.

14. What did you bring, that in hindsight you could've left at home?
    Nearly everything! We started out so much junk we didn't need and left a trail of stuff behind us in hotels/guesthouses we didn't want to haul around anymore.

15. How did your round-the-world trip change your life? How did it affect and change you as a person?
    I definitely see the world with new eyes now and I worry much less. There are so many things to concern yourself with while traveling you just have to let most of it go or you will go insane.

16. If you had to sum up your round-the-world trip in one sentence, what would it be?
    Going on a RTW was the best decision we ever made.

17. Are you planning more trips and travels for the future? Are you planning another round-the-world trip?
    I am always planning more trips! The next time we move we plan on hopefully doing a several month trip again. Would love to go RTW with kids someday...

18. Why do you think people should go on round-the-world trips? Why not just take a regular old one- or two-week vacation instead?
    One or two week vacations are great but you can't experience the heart and soul of a place if you don't stay a while. Long term travel forces you to do daily life things in a foreign environment and thereby really experience the country. Short trip don't test you the way longer trips do an you miss out on a lot.

19. What is the most valuable thing you learned?
    That people are basically the same all over the world. That we are blessed to live in the USA, but we don't have all the answers on how to live. That wealth doesn't bring happiness.

20. What is the biggest myth that people have about round-the-world traveling?
    That it can't be done because your life is too complicated. If you REALLY want to, you will be willing to give up some of your securities (house, job, stuff, etc.) to do it.

21. Why do you like to travel?
    Because the world is too big to stay home. There is too much to see, do and experience to NOT travel. Like the quote, the world is a book and those who don't travel only read one page.

22. What is your advice for people planning their own RTW trip?
    Too much planning will kill the trip. Plan enough to be safe and let the rest happen. Take nearly nothing with you, you won't need it and you just have to worry about losing it.