Asiatrip

05-23-2008

Asiatrip

What's Asiatrip?

Genesis

for 3 years now, and we've had a very happy life here. Indeed, we’ve completely integrated ourselves into the Taiwanese style of life. We both work in a Taiwanese company, and we even have a Taiwanese Health Insurance card which surprises many Taiwanese people. Plus, we have good friends here, we enjoy the beauty of the landscape and love Taiwanese food.

But, time flies, and we miss our family and friends more and more. So we made a difficult choice. We’ve decided to go back home to be closer to our family. We don’t really know what our life will be like. We only know that we’ll have to start everything again from nothing. This is a little bit hard to imagine, knowing how well-established we are here. After all, we are getting older, and it’s a little bit frightening. We just can’t leave Taiwan as we did when we left everything in France to come to Taipei. We haven't the same frame of mind anymore. 

In hopes of stemming our disappointment in leaving Taiwan, we decided to travel around Asia for a year. Actually, we'd like to go back home “by road.” Flying directly from Taipei to Paris would be too hard, that’s why we’ll just take our time along the road. Here it is, our dream: “Asiatrip” 

We think that it’s the right time to make this dream come true. We are healthy, young, and have no kids. Lots of our friends are married with kids and have started to settle down. One day, we’ll probably long for a more cozy existence, too, but before that we’d like to enjoy a nomad's existence: the desire of being detached from creature comforts.

Here is a poem from Samuel Ullman that inspired us:

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a body of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the Infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.

No pain, no gain

and finishing in India (or even further if we still have time and money).

Perhaps, you are wondering how we could travel for so long. Wanderlust comes first, then the will-power, the savings and the courage to leave everything behind us. It’s been a few months, and we've saved a lot of money. We’ve started to restrain ourselves considerably: no more shopping and no more fancy restaurants. Sometimes it’s a little bit frustrating, but indeed when you think about what we are going to experience, this is no matter, and it's worth it to do it. In fact, this pushes us to discover again the small stands of food on the street which are so delicious and so cheap.

Another way to travel

You could take your time and enjoy the way that people live in each country, experiencing the local life style in each country. For us, backpacking means freedom: no restrictions on length, no plan, and no material issues. Even our itinerary could change, depending on wherever the journey carries us and on the people we meet.

We plan to live on 15 euros a day each, all-included (transportation, food, accommodation and visits). We think that travelling on a budget is also a good way to meet local people. We’re not going to meet a lot of local people in the Hyatt Hotel.

The other good point for the backpackers is the light load. Just a few clothes and that’s it. Except for our passport and our camera, nothing has value. Like a turtle, we’ll carry our home on our back and slowly feel our way along. This is also a good way to flee from consumer society which we are used to, again this is freedom!

. We’ll be able to go one step further in our conversation with others. This will also allow us to understand more about our surroundings and communicate more easily with people of different associations that we'll visit. Plus, we’ll try to speak in the local language as much as possible, at least a few words like “thanks” or “hello” as a sign of courtesy.

All of these will allow us to travel on our own way. “Asiatrip” means another way of travelling, another way of thinking.

Helpful travelling

Asiatrip is a project which pays attention to the environmental conservation. We’ll travel in an ethical manner which means to come closer to local life style and, most of all, respect our surroundings. We’ll avoid to take plane, because it's the transportation that discharges the most CO2. Rather. we’ll take public transport like buses or boats. Bikes will also be a nice way to discover plenty of places. We'll of course eat local food and get accommodations run by local people. When crossing each country we’ll always keep in mind to respect nature and people around us. We’d like emphasize ethical tourism.

A great experience of humanity. Simply, go to local people. Exchange in order to understand better our cultural differences. We’d like to give people some time by doing something useful. We always wanted to volunteer but haven’t found the right time. Now, we have plenty of free time, so it's a good opportunity to cleverly spend this time by helping people in need.

We're actively looking for associations who deal with environmental or humanitarian issues, to be Asia trotters who commit themselves to fair causes. We sincerely hope that we will be able to bring our modest contribution within the limits of our abilities and our availability. We already plan to work at a reforestation field in India and to help children in Laos. When, for any reason, we aren't able to contribute, we could write articles about the different associations we've come across to help them to get the word out and to convey their values.

Sharing

Asiatrip’s intention is exchange. Exchange between different people we meet and with people who want to hear about our project. The aim is to help, to inform and to make people more aware of what’s going on at the edge on the world. This is also an opportunity to make others discover, love and respect our amazing planet.

Just the simple word “voyage” make people dream, promising exoticism and discovery. We’ll be pleased to share everything relating to this year with different people: other cultures, customs, sceneries, languages … Those who couldn’t afford to make such a dream come true could at least satisfy parts of their curiosity through our travel journal. And for those who want to take the plunge, we intend to present a lot of useful information about the preparation of such project. But it’s still in French for now (I am too lazy to translate the whole blog into English, if one is interesting in translating, just go ahead! Here is the link : http://asiatrotteurs.canalblog.com/archives/preparatifs/index.html)

Fruits of Asiatrip

We don't have any doubt about what this experience will offer us, from a personal and even professional perspective.

Not simply geographical, this travel will especially be a path to knowledge. We’ll reach a lot of different cultures, hear many languages, test new tastes… Travelling is also a kind of school. What comes before the journey is already a source of knowledge. In fact, looking for various information about countries means a lot to us. We’ll get into geography, history, climate, politics, religion, etc. right before arriving in the related countries. This will help us to understand more easily our interlocutors and, most of all, to avoid unintentionally offending people around us.

Narrow-mindedness often comes from the lack of knowledge of anything other than what they are used to. Rubing elbows with so many different cultures could only make us become open-minded.
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page”  St. Augustine

This year is also a good point to learn how to think differently about money. Wealth isn’t just a matter of money; wealth also means relationships you can have with people, wealth of knowledge and anecdotes amassed during one's life. For sure, we’ll be penniless at the end of this year, but still rich.

From a little bit more down-to-earth point of view, Asiatrip brought us face to face with difficulties when setting up such project on our own. It requires us to be well-organised and well-motivated, to carry out unremitting and advanced research. Undeniably this will be a plus in our future career.

Currently, we are trying to figure out a way to not make this gap year so selfish. We all know that it's very difficult to afford oneself a whole year doing what you want. That would be great if we could do some voluntary work somewhere. We would like to take this opportunity to help people in need. This trip will also be an environmental and relief issue.

Our knowledge in Chinese, English and French will definitely help us to get in touch with more people around Asia

There are definitely different ways of travelling. We’ve chosen to travel the backpacker way, which often means being on a budget and living more like local people: taking local transport, eating local food… We had already tested this way of travelling and we love it.

During this interim year, we are going to visit a lot of countries, starting from Malaysia

We’ve been living in Taiwan

Itinerary

Back home by road? So many itineraries are possible. We need to make a choice. We’ve tried to figure out one which follows our fancies without being impractical. In fact, it would be a pity to go back and forth or to take plane when we could avoid it. Studying climates and seasons is not a bad idea. It would enable us to stay out of the way of extreme climatic conditions like crossing over a country during the monsoon season. We also need to learn more about visa requirements. It is worth knowing if we could get visa at the border when arriving in the country or, if not, where we could apply for it beforehand.

This itinerary is more a guiding line than a certain route. It’s not immovable, and we probably will modify it. First and foremost, we want to keep our freedom and to be open to any offer.

Here is our itinerary :

Click on the map to enlarge. 

Maybe you’d like to team up for part of the trip? Interested in a country or a region? Or holidays to make before any deadline? Just take a look at our schedule and contact us as soon as possible. And for those who can’t make it but ardently wish to discover place, send us your request, and we’ll try to fix it by sending pics and our impressions of said place. We’d like to let you travel vicariously through the medium of our blog.

06-05-2008

New orientation

Big news! It's been a while since we updated this blog, because we were really busy planing our trip, or should I say re-planing it.

Doing some volunteer work is not so easy, most of the time, the volunteers are supposed to have a minimum experience in that field, which we don't have.

During a conference about sanitary issues because of bad water quality, I met Joel Ciceron, head of Veolia Water in Taiwan. I contacted him to ask for his support regarding this volunteer issue, so that we would have more credibility. So we met one day for lunch, and while talking, he had a marvelous idea: why wouldn't we carry a Water Box? Great idea, indeed. What is a Water Box? It was created around 10 years ago by European scientists and teachers, and is dedicated to aware children between 9 and 12 about problems caused by the lack of care concerning water. This Box contains educational material to make simple and visual experiences with the kids, a booklet for the kids, a booklet for the teacher, and some posters, like for instance one explaining the natural cycle of water.
In each country we'll visit, we'll go in a school to spend time with children and doing the experiences with them.
Furthermore, we'll keep this Box with us to keep visiting new schools, so we'll try to make a "local version" of the Water Box with whatever we can find to replace the original equipment. Then, even after we leaved the school, the classes could still do those experiences.

This Water Box is of course not free. The price is around US$ 200, and it was kindly offered to us by Veolia Water Taiwan. Nice, right? But this is not the only thing Joel did for us: he also helped us to find a hosting company to buy a domain name and host our website (Formosahost), and introduced us to eRenlai, to have a new media to talk about this project. Nicolas, currently in placement at Veolia Water Taiwan is our contact window there and helps us a lot to put everything together before the D day ... which is coming really soon.

All these changes make Asiatrip take a brand new orientation, with a real backbone, a real structure, with lots of people working all together. All the moments we spend with them are definitely helpful.

So, we'd like to thank Joel, his wife Karine, Nicolas, Roger (Veolia), Marc ans Cynthia (Formosahost), Thibault and Cerise (eRenlai) and so many for their unbelievable support brought to this adventure, which we care even more about now since we are surrounded by their advice and support. Thank you all from the deepest of our heart.

Here is the link to follow the Water Box itinerary : http://nomadwaterschool.canalblog.com/

06-28-2008

Malaysia (June 10th - June 20th)

Sabbah, Borneo, Malaysia oriental

June 10th
First day of the rest of our life. Kota Kinabalu is the place where it all begins.

Here is the link for the pics of Kota Kinabalu : http://asiatrotteursmy.canalblog.com/albums/06_10_kota_kinabalu/index.html

June 13th

We’ll spend the coming 3 days in the wild jungle of Borneo, in Uncle Tan’s Wildlife Camp along Kinabatang river. Boat on the river, day and night treks, crocodiles, scorpions, snakes, and other rare frogs will surround us. And most impressive: orang utans, huge and peaceful.

Here is the link to see the pics of the jungle : http://asiatrotteursmy.canalblog.com/albums/06_10_jungle/index.html

June 16th

Next step, one of the 3 most beautiful diving spots in the world. Says who? Jacques-Yves Cousteau himself. Sipadan is definitely a wonderful place with loads of turtles, sharks, barracudas, … diving, snorkeling and chilling on Mabul and Sipadan islands. (For those who are wandering about Guillaume’s head, he has taken off his stitches, so everything is fine)

Here is the link for the pics of Mabul : http://asiatrotteursmy.canalblog.com/albums/06_15_mabul/index.html

Here is the link for the pics of Sipadan : http://asiatrotteursmy.canalblog.com/albums/06_17_sipadan/index.html

June 19th

We head to Tawau in order to pass the border to get into Indonesia. When asking for a cheap hotel, we met a Chinese Malay guy who brought us in a Chinese hotel. We spent all the evening with him and we feel great to speak Chinese. Thanks A Ming for this very nice time.

Here is the link to see the pics of Tawau : http://asiatrotteursmy.canalblog.com/albums/06_18_tawau/index.html

07-06-2008

Indonesia (June 20th- July 12th)

Kalimatan

June 20th

We crossed the border by boat and arrived in Nunukan from where we will take a boat to Sulawesi.

Here is the link to see the pics of Nunukan : http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/1__nunukan/index.html

June 21th

The boat to Pantoloan we planned to take has been cancelled, so we took another one to Pare Pare. Here we are, boarding for a long journey through the Makassar straight (2 nights, 1 day, around 35 hours). During the trip, we looked like boat people, packed among the goods, and it actually was a great experience. We met an officer who let us visit the cabin, the engine room, and every part of the boat.

Here is the link to see the pics of our long journey through Makassar strait : http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/2__traversee_en_bateau/index.html

Sulawesi

June 23th

We arrived in the port of Pare Pare early in the morning. So, we had the time to go to the Pelni Office (national maritime company) to check when we can leave Makassar to any place in Flores (It s good to know it in advance because some destinations can be reached only twice per month). Then, we took a bus to reach Rantepao, the heart of Tana Toraja. This region is amazing, so beautiful. One of the cultural events that attracts many tourists to Tona Toraja is the funeral ceremony, very special and impressive.

We stayed in Tana Toraja more than a week since the region is beautifully amazing and there is so much to do. We trekked a lot, rode a motorcycle a whole day, attended funeral ceremonies and even saw buffalo fights.

Here is the link for the pics of Tana Toraja : http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/06_26_tana_toraja/index.html 

July 2^nd

It’s time for us to leave, so we head south to Sengkang just to make a break on the too long road from Rantepao to Bira. A few hours walking in the city, a boat trip on the vivid lake, this is all we have time to do before night falls.

To see the pics of Sengkang click on the following link : http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/2___sengkang/index.html
 

July 3^rd

It took us one more day to go down to Bira, where we had a 3 days rest enjoying the beach.

Here are the pics of Bira : http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/3__bira/index.html
 

Nusa   Tenggara 

July 6^th

Want some more boat trip? Just 27 hours from Bira to Labuanbajo, on the island of Flores. From there we organized our trip through the Nusa Tenggara. Yes, on a boat, once again. We sailed on a small boat for 3 days heading east: meet the Komodo Dragon, swim beautiful beaches, and hate the big waves, way too big for our small boat… Our visa expires soon, so sadly, we had to skip Lombok.

To see the pics of Labuanbajo click on this link : http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/6__labuanbajo/index.html

Here is the link for the pics of our boat trip through the Nusa Tenggara : http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/croisiere_/index.html

07-31-2008

Indonesia - End (July 13th-July 26th)

July 13th

Bali, its landscapes, temples, volcanos, unique culture in Indonesia. Small island, but lots to see, and not in Kuta as many people would think.

Pics : http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/8__bali/index.html

July 18th

Still moving west, we now go to Probolinggo to climb Mount Bromo, an active volcano. Night trekk and freezing cold temperartures. Some things have to be deserved.

Pics : http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/9__gunung_bromo/index.html

July 20th

Still on Java island is Yogyakarta, on of the most visited cities of the island.

Pics: http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/10__yogyakarta/index.html

People come here to visit World Heritage sites Prambanan

Pics: http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/11__prambanan/index.html

and Borobudur

Pics: http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/12__borobudur/index.html

July 24th

After a 3-day trip, we hit Bukkitinggi, next to the equator, last city we'll visit in Indonesia. Cascading rice fields, traditional houses and the world biggest flower, this is what the city has to offer among other things.

Pics: http://asiatrotteursid.canalblog.com/albums/13__bukittinggi/index.html

08-12-2008

Malaysia again (July 29th - August 6th)

Melaka

July 29^th

First step in Malaysia. Melaka is an ancient Dutch harbor, full of testimony from that period, and surrounded by malls, huge luxury hotels and museums. It’s a very pleasant city, clean, friendly and damn hot since it’ close to the equator.

Pics: http://asiatrotteursmy2.canalblog.com/albums/01__melaka/index.html

Kuala Lumpur

August 1^st

KL is the city where you can feel the most the melting pot of the people living in this country. Chinese people burning incense while the Imam is calling for prayer and the Indian are sweeping their temple. This is also the town of the Petronas Towers, the national mosque, the highest TV tower … A great city.

Pics: http://asiatrotteursmy2.canalblog.com/albums/02__kuala_lumpur/index.html

Pulau Pangkor

August 3^rd

After the crowd of KL, it’s time to have a quiet break in Pulau Pangkor, small island on the western coast. Swimming, tanning, trekking in the jungle, eating and sleeping. Just what we wanted.

Pics: http://asiatrotteursmy2.canalblog.com/albums/03__pangkor/index.html

Cameron Highlands

August 5^th

This place is also known as the green carpet of Malaysia because of the tea fields covering thousands of kilometers square, dozens of mountains. Also the house of strawberry farms, honey farms, and of course, the jungle. It’s cooler here, which is pretty nice. Another great place in this country. We like it more and more.

Pics of Cameron Highlands : http://asiatrotteursmy2.canalblog.com/albums/04__cameron_highlands/index.html 

08-19-2008

Malaysia - End ( August 8th - August 19th)

^Penang

August 8^th

^{Pics of Penang and Georgetown :
http://asiatrotteursmy2.canalblog.com/albums/05__penang/index.html}

^{Visiting Justine in Penang was really awesome. Chinatown, Little India, fashion show, trek in Penang Hill, swimming pool, night markets … what else could we ask for? We had 10 marvelous days here with a very good friend. It is nice to meet friends on the road. Especially in such a great place. So great it was difficult to leave.}

08-23-2008

Thailand (August 19th - August 26th)

^{Krabi, Railey}

August 19^th

^{What does the word "Thailand" make you think about? Beautiful beaches, outdoor activities, jungle, bars and beer? That’s exactly it.}

^{Pics of Krabi : http://asiatrotteursth.canalblog.com/albums/01__krabi___rai_leh/index.html}

^{Koh Phi Phi}

^{August 22nd}

Koh Phi Phi, probably one of the most beautiful islands in Thailand. Despite the 2004 tsunami, everything is now up and running, and it’s really heaven on Earth. Diving, snorkeling, good food, it really looks like in the movie “The Beach” where it was shot.

^{Pics of Phi Phi : http://asiatrotteursth.canalblog.com/albums/02__koh_phiphi/index.html}

^{Pics of the dive in Koh PhiPhi : http://asiatrotteursth.canalblog.com/albums/03__plongee_a_koh_phiphi/index.html}