Well, getting back on to my travel blog, I am currently pulling and tidying my travel journal into a coherent book format – who knows, I might publish this year!   It could be my 2017 dream – or for you, maybe travel is that dream this coming year!?

If so, please read the journal entries, check out the photos (a few of the 7000 I took whilst away for almost a year – and so many memories they bring when I look at them!)  The photos are something else I need to bring to order – although filed per country, I think now I need to work on cities and events, then actually label each and every one to find them more easily!

Vietnam from an ex pat point of view – the rooftop pool over the Saigon river, villas and multi story buildings – or the roads and bikes, taxis and villages!

Any new perspective gives you new insights and thought provoking views from somewhere new and unexpected …

 

I also need to move them off my iPad completely!   This last one is scary though – what if I lose one or two, didn’t move them over like I think I have to safer places (!!!!) on laptop and back up drives??!!!

What if I forget where I’ve been, who I met and what I did?  Well, let me say there is little change of that!  But the details do get a little lost over time – where was that picture taken?  When was I there – November/December?   Where did I meet that person now a friend on facebook?!

Yes, it happens.  But what has stayed for the six months I’ve been back – last year now!!  😦 – is the changes within.  My head, my heart, my soul.   My practical, efficient side is tilted now, more towards a relaxed, who may care attitude mostly!   My business head took several months to come back onto my shoulders – and my outlook is skewed now to a different direction and values!4

The Kuala Lumpur mosque round the corner from my first (hoirrlbe!) hostel there!   Familiar religion icon in an unfamiliar and so unexpected place – I explored, found it and the station, the market and something like a scarf to cover my bare shoulders when I wandered in a place with different values to my western knowledge!   All from one mosque I noticed from my room …

 

Dreams do change us.  We are never the same when a dream comes true!   But that isn’t to say we need to change from who we are or were – every experience changes us, day to day or dream by dream!

Let the changes happen.  Humans are made to grow, learn, develop and evolve.  Travel simply does that faster perhaps!   A long term traveller or short term traveller, you are never the same when you return or wherever you move to next …

I love that.  I think it was always there and looking at history, this is what changed lots of things drastically – from the flat to round world, new continents and plants, animals, landscapes – options and opportunities that came from unexpected places (trade, prison to paradise, freedom to choose).

Never refuse the option to TRAVEL – not just a holiday, make it an excursion, a travelling opportunity – to see it from different viewpoints, especially the local one!  From foods and activities, events and new places, chat to local people or the visitors you find, explore the area and the architecture, buildings and plans.   It opens you up to so many new insights and outlooks!  Try it.  Just one day off from the resort to explore the landscape you’ve taken the trouble to travel to – become a day long traveller if not a fortnight or a month, or even for a year or more!   When you travel – you learn, you grow, you yearn for more!

This is a photo from the plane flying from Chile to Peru!   I was disappointed to not see the mountains from above due to the cloud …then realised I could as the tops poked through when I looked up and forward instead of down!   Like islands in a white frothy sea, these monstrous mountains took my breath away – for the first but not the last time, the Andes are impressive from the air!