TR: RTW

[cloud cult]

In August, 2018 we bought a one-way ticket to Bangkok.

20180828_120515 by redpinecanyon, on Flickr

The Cloud Cultette (hereainfter "TCC") and I have been around the world twice, with each trip lasting a year. This time we Lil' Cloud Cult (hereinafter "LCC"). LCC cut his toddler teeth traveling to places like Nicaragua and Colombia, but those were 10-day trips at the most. We knew he traveled well, but did not know how well he would travel long-term, so we started in Bangkok, where we've been before.

After a short acclimitization period, we went north to Chiang Mai.

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We like to visit UNESCO World Heritage Sites, so we went to Sukhotai.

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We went to Vientiane and had cocktails along the Mekong.

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When September rolled around, TCC started homeschooling LCC.

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We bussed across the heartland of Thailand and into Cambodia, where we toured Angkor Wat by bike.

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TCC and I had been in Cambodia years ago -- a lot has changed, and we did not like it, so we hopped an Air Asia flight to the west coast of Thailand.

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We boated out to an island on the east coast and went snorkeling.

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Then it was south to peninsular Malaysia.

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After visiting Kuala Lumpur, we flew to Borneo.

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Then hiked in Bako National Park.

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[cloud cult]

He made friends wherever he went.

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We bussed the entire north coast of Borneo.

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And popped in and out of Brunei, which had recently implemented Sharia law.

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We were starting to feel pretty good about LCC's ability to travel long term, so we pushed into unfamiliar neighborhoods.

From Kota Kinabalu, we flew Air Asia to Hong Kong.

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It was expensive. So we flew to South Korea.

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South Korea was peaceful, and after the soggy heat of Southeast Asia, we found the weather to be fabulous. But no one spoke English, almost nothing useful was written in anything other than Korean, and the food -- well, the food situation was brutal. So we flew a discount Korean airline to Tokyo.

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[cloud cult]

From Kyoto we took an overnight flight to Cairns. Originally we had in the back of our minds that we would bike the southeast coast of Australia, but the logistics were dizzying. Instead, we went to K-mart and bout camping gera, then rented a small car.

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We snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef.

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And spent 45 consecutive nights in a tent.

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World's best beaches.

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World's best beach wildlife.

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We got a boogie board from Goodwill.

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And headed straight for Bondi.

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Inland for a spell, where we picked up a new rental car.

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Then the Twelve Apostles on a brisk morning.

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Midweek surf lessons on a blistering hot day in Torquay.

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Then hiking in the Great Snowies before into South Australia and Adelaide, where we returned the rental car but kept the Kmart camping gear, and headed to the airport after a few last nights on the coast.

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[Buster Highmen]

++++

[danmelon]

Sweeet

[cloud cult]

From Adelaide we flew to Christchurch.

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After a quick stop for laundry

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we picked up another rental car and headed for Milford Sound.

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There were several milestones for the boy on this trip. He lost his first tooth crossing the Friendship Bridge between Laos and Thailand. He had his seventh birthday in Seoul. And he spent Christmas in a tent in Wanaka.

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Backroads in Ohau.

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Our Kmart camping gear, 70 days in. Arranging the tent each evening was part of his allowance.

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Mt. Cook.

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New Zealand is truly one of the world's great landscapes, but we had the unfortunate timing of being here at high season, so the roads were crowded with RVs and the campgrounds were always full. After three weeks, we were ready to get out.

A day-long flight took us to Bali.

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Then we headed to Java to see the ancient Hindu and Buddhist ruins near Yogyakarta. Some members of our party continued to attract a crowd wherever they went.

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Borobodur.

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From Yogyakarta we flew back to Bangkok and did some shopping, gearing up for some major transitions.

[tintin5]

Fantastic!


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[cloud cult]

After a few days in Bangkok we boarded a Druk Air flight headed to Paro. But after just 30 minutes of flying north, the plane banked to the northwest and started to descend; snow in Paro meant we were being diverted to Calcutta.

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Our arrival without Indian visas caused some significant problems, but Druk Air staff took care of us, put us up in the nicest hotel of the trip, and literally guided us by hand through the airport.

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After a 24 hour delay, we were on the ground in Bhutan.

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TCC and I had looked into going to Bhutan twice before, but it was always too expensive. It is still too expensive, but we realized it would likely never be cheaper.

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It's difficult to describe the colossal beauty of this place.

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Playing a sort of Himalayan Monopoly.

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After a short, bucolic week in Bhutan we took an uneventful flight back to Bangkok on Druk Air, spent two days under the city's record-setting blanket of smog, and flew to India.

This venture to India again was not without its problems. For one, we forgot to apply for visas until two days before we were scheduled to arrive -- luckily they were granted just hours before we left for the airport. Then at the airpot, Indigo airline staff threw us a curveball -- did we have onward travel booked out of India? No, as a matter of fact, we did not. We spent a frantic hour at the gate booking flights out of the country, getting e-confirmation just before the jetway closed.

We went to Varanasi.

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It was incredible, but it's also a lot to take in.

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Somewhere in Asia the tone of this trip changed. It went from being simple travel around the world to an effort to take the boy to see and experience the world's greatest sites. From Agra we flew to Jaipur and made an unpleasant trip to Agra.

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With time to kill, we spent 25 cents on a haircut.

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Back to Jaipur, in the Pink City.

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Then it was a short hop to Bombay to see the incredible Elephanta Caves.

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Spring was now approaching -- after six months on the road, we began to sense that the end of the trip was approaching.

[jmedslc]

omg i might quit my job today. amazing

[Boissal]

What a unique experience for LCC. He'll have seen more of the world by the time he turns 8 than most of this board combined. Spectacular parenting!

[406]

Impressive trip, double so to do it with a kid.

[El Chupacabra]

This is the TR to top all TRs. Amazing!

[Lexi-Bell]

CC thanks for sharing, awesome!!

<yourock>

[cloud cult]

There are people who go to India and can't get enough -- I envy them in a way. For me, the filth, the pollution, the poverty, the noise -- it's too much. Indians love people, and crowds, and togetherness, which is unique in the world, but as a traveler, it's overwhelming. The last two days in Jaipur we could barely leave the hotel -- it was simply too much.

From India we were at a crossroads. Central Asia was still too cold, as was much of Europe. We wanted to do a safari, but the personal security situation in Kenya was not to our liking. Botswana fit the bill between being interesting and safe, but a short trip there just to see animals would be a huge expense. I was ready for full Middle East mode, but the choices were limited. Israeli stamps in your passport permanently bar you from several Muslim countries, Turkey seemed unstable, and too much of Lebanon was not cool with a 7 year old. Several Gulf nations offered "free layovers," but on closer inspection all that was free was breaking your flight in two -- you had to book through pricey partner hotels and in some cases needed a visa. Egypt was as good as we could get.

We did the pyramids.

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The boy piloted a boat on the Nile, if only for a few moments.

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Duck face selfies in the Sahara FTW!

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Luxor #hellyeah

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Friends you would not make at home.

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Egypt is amazing, but the hassle factor is high. Coming on the heels of India, we were exhausted. We picked up a short hop from Cairo to Beirut to Larnaca, on Cyprus, our entre to Europe.

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Most visitors to Cyprus are Euros hitting the beach in search of sun, but the beaches are lame. We rented a car and headed inland, to small villages hugging cliffsides.

The ski area on the island, on Troodos Mountain, was having a good year, and we rented skis one day and racked up 12,000 vertical feet on the slow chair and t-bar. From the top of the mountain we could see a string of snowcapped mountains running into the interior of Turkey.

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After 10 days we returned the rental car and had a 4 a.m. alarm so we could walk to the airport.

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[cloud cult]

From Cyprus, Central Asia still beckoned, but Europe's call was stronger. We took a short flight to Athens.

Waiting for a subway in Athens -- minutes later on the subway someone tried unsuccessfully to pick my pocket -- the only real brush with danger we had on the entire trip.

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We saw the Acropolis before heading to Greece's amazing islands, like this one, carless Hydra.

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Then it was up the coast to Thessaloniki.

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From here we crossed into the country now known as North Macedonia. Just weeks before it was called FYROM -- the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In one of the longest running geopolitical disputes, Greece objected to any and all spellings of Macedonia, calling the name their own, so the country was left with North Macedonia. We just said Skopje, the name of the capital.

Starting to feel like spring in the mountains.

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From the lakeside town of Ohrid we wound up hiring a taxi to take us all the way to Tirana, the capital of Albania. Our taxi driver openly bribed the border guart to smooth our entry to the country.

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While waiting to check into our apartment we went to a city park playground and heard yelling then saw lots of police. A local said there was a political speech going on. We saw on the news that night that protesters had stormed parliament and set part of it on fire. The next morning, fighter jets flew low over the capital. While walking to get croissants for brekkie I passed a TV showing lolca news with a military person talking in front of a tank. No fucking thanks. We took the first bus for the border and walked into Montenegro.

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[cloud cult]

Montenegro was great; I wish we had more time to see it, but at this point, every choice we made was a decisoin to see one spot in favor of another. You would not think that when traveling for almost a year you would have to cut things out, but as the weeks dwindled, we cut out things on an almost daily basis.

From Kotor it was a short bus ride to Dubrovnik.

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From there we headed to Mostar, Bosnia. Back in 2002 we had been in Dubrovnik and I bought a bus ticket to travel alone to Mostar, in part to see this bridge, but things did not feel right, there were too many unknowns, and at the last minute I jumped off the bus. On a bright sunny day in the fall of 1993 the Croatians shelled this bridge into a million pieces; there is a video of the bombing on YouTube that will break your heart. To stand here all these years later with the boy by the rebuilt bridge was a strange experience.

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After Bosnia it was back into Croatia, them Slovenia for a few moments, then a bee-line for Venice.

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After two expensive, claustrophobic days on Venice we went to Florence.

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Real pizza.

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Then Lucca, where our apartment included bikes.

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A few days later we took a day sailing for Sardinia, where the views were amazing and the Amaretto was cheap.

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[cloud cult]

From the northern tip of Sardinia we took a short morning boat ride to Corsica, which was staggeringly beautiful but also breathtakingly expensive.

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After a week we took a day sailing across rough waters to Nice; at one point we could see a long line of the Alps. From Nice we took a side trip to Monaco, where there are so many super cars they just haphazardly park them on the streets.

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We then bussed across southern France to Barcelona. LCC had seen a doco about the completion of Sagrada Familia and had a lot of questions about it -- so we figured why not see it in person? From there we went to Lyon to stay with friends before finally arriving in Paris.

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The image of the Eiffel Tower is so predominate in Europe it almost symbolizes it, and we saw its image so frequently the boy began to think that Paris was a place just over the next hill. This was a budget trip and we rarely splurged on high ticket items, but just this one time the boy and I bought tickets to take the elevator to the top of the tower.

May was coming to an end at school was about to let out. TCC was anxious to return home and resettle, and she found cheap tickets to the U.S. via Lisbon. I stayed on in Europe for another month, but my time alone was never as good as it was with the family.

The end.

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[east or bust]

Looks like an amazing journey. You have surely imparted life lessons on your boy that no textbook could ever replicate, good on you.

[Dantheman]

Absolutely incredible. I'm genuinely curious what the issues were with the food in Korea. Whenever I saw Anthony Bourdain there on the teevee the food always looked amazing.

[easyrdr]

Awesome TR, some serious travel............nice work!