It is funny that the theme of travel was not one I considered at all when I started this blog. But it turns out I have, and do, travel a fair bit to some pretty cool places and experience them in ways that are maybe less conventional. I honestly thought that after my accident, I would not be able to travel abroad/long distances due to my injuries, so I am grateful that I was wrong. The map below is very outdated (added Portugal, Slovenia, Croatia since) but I can’t be bothered to create a new one.

Asia

I grew up in Asia so, not surprisingly, I am familiar with many destinations there. That being said, there is always so much more to see. My very first taste of solo travel/backpacking was in my final year of university. I saved up the summer before by working a job in the Mechanical Engineering department lab and used the money to backpack around New Zealand that Christmas break. It was a soft introduction since language was not a barrier and New Zealand is so backpacker/traveller-friendly, but it lit the fire well and good.

I’ve since backpacked around Australia and visited Myanmar a few times. The place had changed so much between my visits that it was almost a different place to me.

Europe

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel through a lot of Europe too. I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Portugal (recently) and German (a long time ago). Pretty soon after grad school I backpacked around Central and Eastern Europe. At that time Asians were often seen in some of these countries. In Poland a bunch of school kids were pointing at me. I didn’t interpret that as an insult or racism; I think any kid seeing something different could do something like that.

In the last couple of years, I’ve really fallen for Croatia and Slovenia. I would swim every day in the Adriatic. I wish these Slavic languages weren’t so f’ing difficult!! A prominent linguistics professor once said that he thought Slavic languages are actually a made-up language by aliens. That is one of the things holding me back from, say, moving to either of these countries. Sure a lot of people speak English but I feel like you really do not integrate/get accepted fully unless you can converse in that country/region’s language.

United States & Canada

I created this page just as I was starting a big skiing and ice-climbing solo road trip through Canada and the United States. I drove from Boston, MA to Canmore, Alberta (driving on Highway 1, in between HUGE vehicles carrying only just slightly less huge equipment, in heavy snow was interesting. I then picked my way across to British Columbia, Whistler, then dropped back down into the US into Idaho, then Wyoming, then Utah, then the Rockies. Driving definitely lets you see different/more things and have a very different experience (especially the sleeping in the car bit).

The United States is where I have spent the vast majority of my adult like so it is no surprise that I’ve covered a lot of ground there and in Canada. As I created these maps though, I did think wow, these are really large countries and I’ve done well to see so much of it. I like the site used to create this map below because it allows you to colour-code the states visited. In this case:

Green: States/Provinces I have lived in and/or am extremely familiar with

Blue: States/Provinces I have spent some a significant amount of time in

Orange: States/Provinces I have visited once or twice or passed through. For example, Alaska is orange because I have only been to Anchorage and Alyeska to ski. Update: add North Dakota to the list.

Created with: https://www.gasfoodnolodging.com/visitedstates/us-canada/

Rest of the Americas

My smallest footprint. I spent a fair bit of time in Guatemala, as documented in an old blog of mine. I really enjoyed Chile and got to ski there too. I never made it down to Patagonia before my big climbing accident and for a long time I thought that I didn’t want to go there if I couldn’t experience it in the way I wanted to i.e. mountaineering or even just plain old trekking. My feelings haven’t changed much (a sign that I haven’t moved on, and in some ways it is true) but I’m probably a bit more open to going to places and experiencing them in a more ummm….sedate manner.