Davidson Family

To blog or not to blog…

If you are reading this, then the answer is obvious but I want to share the reason I chose to blog (for now) which is that I feel I owe it those whose information I relied on. Maintaining a blog while traveling, well that is another and unresolved issue. Yes, it will be a good way to keep family abreast of our travels and safety and it would be a nice documentation for the kids later in life. But how easy will it be to write on the road? Will anyone want to read it? Will I want to write or just feel pressured to do so? For now, I will post the logistics I’ve been working through as I clear my desk of travel books, guides, and magazines and get ready to go.

Planning a trip like this takes an enormous amount of research and time. Two years ago, I started with a book that caught my eye at BN: The Big Trip, a Lonely Planet publication. It was a good start but it was written more for the Gap Year student. A search on Amazon yielded two fantastic resources: The Practical Nomad (a treasure trove of good logistical information) and Around the World in Easy Ways (a blog turned into book by a family of four who completed their RTW in 2008-2009) http://www.aroundtheworldineasyways.com/ . Then while reading lisa’s blog (she doesn’t capitalize the first letter) and clicking around the internet, I stumbled on “Luggage Tag Travels” by Phil and Brooke, a young New York couple with a flair for adventure, a humorous and intelligent writing style, and an attention to logistical detail! http://luggagetagtravels.com/

Armed with these three resources in particular, a “Davidson Big Trip TO DO LIST” began to take shape. I found Nomad essential to my logistics list; Easy Ways good for family travel, schooling, and time management; and Phil and Brooke good for items specific to New York like the travel clinic and consulates. I am grateful to have found sources that resonated with how we wanted make our way. To wit:

Logistics

I couldn’t begin to describe this list in any succinct way so I’ll leave it for another post or maybe I’ll post it sometime. The Practical Nomad helped me group logistics by type and then I could list out items underneath until they became a detailed road map for travel documentation, health and safety, transportation, communication and financial planning. This book is excellent.

Places

We based our route of travel on 75-80 degrees and sunshine for our pleasure and our practical desire to travel light (one carry on and one back pack per person means no winter coats or boots). We bought a bunch of books to try to get the kids involved in picking places, which failed, but more on that another time. The stack is 18 inches tall: 100 Greatest Trips (Travel & Leisure), 100 Places That Can Change Your Child’s Life and The 10 Best of Everything (both by National Geographic), 500 Places to Take Your Kids Before They Grow Up (Frommer’s) and then a series of Lonely Planet books like The Travel Book, A Year of Adventures, 1000 Ultimate Sites. By the end of looking through these and trying to put post-its on my World Map I was completely overwhelmed!

To bring some order to the process I divided the trip down further and further into smaller, manageable (hopefully) parts. The first part related to the picking destinations and making travel arrangements. 1. Agree on direction of travel and continents. 2. Pick major/must do experiences. 3. Pick specific countries of interest and price the air. 4. Book hotels and land-based travel. And all the while thinking about Part 5: Logistics (which at one time was 3 pages worth of To Do Items in 8 point font).

Steps 1 and 2 were the easiest: 75-80 degrees (and sunny) – check. Africa or South America? Africa. Major events: New Year’s in Sydney Harbor, Australia. Safari in Africa. White Nights in St. Petersburg. Tulips in Holland. Fashion Week in Paris. One Direction in Australia (that one didn’t pan out, neither did “Every day in New York City” but we did manage to satisfy “Birthday in a hammock with infinity pool”).

So the TO DO LIST categories for this year-long journey started out as: FALL – Asia to NZ, WINTER – Africa, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and Turkey, SPRING AND SUMMER – Prague, Paris, Holland, Copenhagen, St. Petersburg. Then under each section, I would start fleshing out places in Asia that took into account our “first choices” and countries we wanted to experience: Japan, China’s Great Wall, SE Asia and Angkor Wat, NZ South Island Milford Track, Australia’s New Year’s Eve, Tasmania’s MOMA and Kangaroo Island.

Then breaking each down further Japan became: Tokyo, Kyoto, Naoshima, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Beppu based on tips from friends, research from my library of travel books, the TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet and Pinterest boards, and my National Geographic Japan Book. (Quick note on guide books: I bought the full set of National Geographic Travel Guides for their descriptions of the culture and history of each country we could be visiting – the writing is superior to all others but alas, no kindle version. They are expensive but worth every penny in my view. Heavy books doesn’t fit with light travel and I am tempted to mail them ahead to various locations. As a back-up, I’ve downloaded Lonely Planet e-books for each final destination.)

Finally, the destination list would be revised again to take into account whether we wanted the experience of really living in a place and diving deep into the culture or we wanted to move through more like tourists; do we need to be able to work and therefore need high-speed internet free from cyber-spies and hackers, how much roughing it will we do and will the kids find the poverty overwhelming. So Japan ends up with four rather than six stops. A combination of hostel and luxury hotel, a lengthier stay in Kyoto, shorter stays elsewhere. From there, a final itinerary: 5 nights Tokyo, 12 nights Kyoto, 2 nights Naoshima, 2 Hiroshima. Then the daytime details: Bullet trains, walking tours, ceramics studios, tea ceremony, day with Hibakusha, baseball tickets and down days for study, laundry and work.

You get the idea. And, it might be over-planned; guilty as charged. We’ll just alter as we go to slow our pace or speed it up as we see fit.

Here are a couple of other areas people have asked us to explain:

Schooling

We have friends who took a year and based themselves in a single country with their children attending school in China for a year and another family who went to school in Bali for a year. We wanted to move around more than that type of schooling would allow. In the course of exploring options with their schools, and thinking about the pros and cons of homeschooling the girls ourselves, we learned about Laurel Springs, an online school based in Ojai, California. For us, this is a terrific solution to schooling while traveling. You can go online to see how it works but basically, the girls are students of Laurel Springs and will have teachers, advisors, and an online community of fellow students that we hope will become their friends.

Social (media) Lives

Leaving friends behind for a trip around the world sounds exciting, if you’re a grown up. For a teen and a tween, less so. The girls needed time to process the idea (and I may be delusional) but I think they are looking forward to it.

Yes, we will miss our friends, but we will have access to the internet during much of the trip. The girls will have wifi enabled devices so they can stay in touch with friends and post on Instagram. We will all have computers so that we can work, write, complete school assignments, pay bills, revise trip details, etc.

And yes, we expect to make new friends along the way who will further enrich our lives.

Signing off,

Once we finalized our itinerary, I compiled a checklist of Visa and Health/Medical requirements. Visa’s would be needed for China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Australia. Cambodia and Australia use an electronic visa system so that was no problem. Laos visas are available either at the Laos consulate in Washington DC or on arrival at the airport. China and Vietnam issue visas here in their New York consular offices so I set out to get those.

China

I had read and heard that the process for securing a tourist visa to China was, well, unpleasant. I was prepared for a long wait, a thorough screening process, and an unhelpful agent. What I experienced was nothing of the sort. It probably helped that I had filled out the correct forms (the Consulate in NYC accepts the Form V.2011A CNNYCONSULATE JUNE 2011 EDITION ONLY), brought copies of the invitation letter from the Tour Company showing paid in full, AND copies of our flight reservations also showing paid in full.

First, you enter on the 42nd street side of the building. There is a security screening there where you must show your phone is powered down, cameras must be left with security (along with any food or beverage you might have brought along) and your bags scanned. Not such a big deal.

I had heard about the meticulous review the agents give applications – and even a story of a rejected application because the signature went outside the signor’s box. The young man who helped me was perfectly pleasant and very efficient. I arrived at the Consulate shortly before 9am (opening time) and left with my claim ticket (hooray) by 9:20am!

By Friday, we will have our visa’s in hand and another item from the ToDo list accomplished!

Vietnam

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