Travelling preparations |
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The ideaTraveling has always fascinated us Arend was sixteen when he went camping with his now ex-girlfriend. He had a motorbike and they traveled to the Eiffel-region in Germany. Akkie was eighteen when she and a friend go to Germany on a holiday. A year later they explore Austria. The first far backpack trip went to China via Hong-Kong. It was a trip that took them trough a world that is, for the most of us, completely different from what we’re used to. The differences between China and the western world were very big at the time, even more so than they are today. We went from Hong-Kong to Peking, where people were demonstrating for freedom and democracy. This was in April and June, when we were in South-China, when the Chinese people’s army bloodily killed the uprising. When we returned in Peking the atmosphere was grim and the Dutch Embassy told us to leave the country as soon as possible. The prizes for a ticket on the Trans Siberia Route had plummeted on the black market to 125 Dollars. So we traveled back via Moscow and Berlin back to Friesland.
This trip also was the start to explore Asia, Malaysia and Singapore. In 1991 we traveled for eight whole weeks through Indonesia. In 1993 we went to Saigon through Vietnam back to China. The difference was enormous compared with 4 years earlier, the developments we made in 15 years they made in only 4. In 1994 we went for the first time to South-America. Peru and Bolivia, two pour countries with an interesting Maya culture. It’s totally different from Asia first and foremost because the people are mostly Catholic. We also visited North-Africa and the Middle-East. Because camping was the way to go for us we bought a camper in 1997. With it we traveled across Europe after our other hobby chasing Carp. In the fall of 1999 we made a trip through South-India and it was here that we made a huge breakthrough. India is like our first love China enormous although not as big. Both countries have more then 1 billion inhabitants and a strong independent culture and mystic…… At the beach of Kovalam in the South we see a white truck and as we walk to it turns out to be a Dutch truck. After we had a conversation with the people who owned it, we lay on the beach and came to the conclusion that ‘this is what we wanted’. |
