Casey
Round-the-World Traveler Round the World Travel GuideYour One-stop Source to Plan & Book Around-the-World Trips
September 2004
1-2 Years
$6,000 so far
26
USA
Santa Barbara, California, USA
Office Lacky
It's my career
No
We (my husband and I) plan to go from Los Angeles to Samoa to New Zealand to Indonesia to Malaysia to Thailand to Vietnam to China to Japan to India to Moscow to Germany to Czech Republic to Switzerland to Greece to Home (where ever the heck that is).
We have both traveled around Europe, the US, and assorted other places, so we have the bug. He'll need a break from writing his dissertation; I just want to get out of "office space". There are so many other reasons, those are just a few.
That he or I will get really really sick or injured and/or I'll spend the entire trip sunburnt (I'm super super pale) and/or we'll miss a very important (or tragic) event back home.
Pretty much supportive (though haven't exactly showcased our trip at work yet – kinda waiting for quite a while to pull that rabbit out of my hat). My folks are a bit wary, but in the end they'll be happy for us. They want us to use the money to buy a house instead (right, right, with a dog and picket fence too).
To the Nth Degree
Not even close to packing yet, but we will pack very light! I think that our most indispensable item will be my birth control pills (uh-huh).
I think that we will become more patient and understanding people, and that it will greatly improve our abilities to negotiate challenges and physically taxing situations. Most of all, I think that it will strengthen (and test) our relationship.
Totally stoked/borderline obsessed.
I think that being gone for a long time in one stretch opens your mind up to a whole different framework. I don't even think that one can mentally escape form the "daily grind" for at least 3 months. Plus, if you're a budget traveler, it's cheaper to just keep on a-goin' instead of flying home all the time.
That it's a vacation.
We like to check out cool stuff and see what we can see. Also, hopefully, to see arenas in which we can help out in this little world of ours. Like "where are our efforts most needed: at an orphanage in Thailand or a school in the Bronx?" kinda thing.
I think that the most important thing you can do is to research the hell out of your trip, learn facts and histories about all sorts of countries, get all planned and prepared, do budgets and what not, then start your trip, relax, have a beer, and let the journey guide you! I would also advise folks to try and avoid pre-purchasing all of their plane tickets before they even leave their home soil. From what I've heard, you totally pigeon-hole yourself and create a very inflexible itinerary that might bum you out later on.
