My oldest biological daughter has gone completely around the world and visited lake Baikal and traveled by the Siberian express to Vladivostoc and then to Japan to visit her best childhood friend and then to S. Korea when my oldest son was teaching there and visited them as well before flying back to SFO (San Francisco Airport) to spend time with us. This was several years ago now. However, the point I'm trying to make is that I never would have done this alone and felt safe at all doing this.
It's not that I wouldn't have done this. NO. It's that I would never have done this alone without a wife or friend or one of my children or something like that. So, in this sense my oldest daughter is the first one in the family to completely circumnavigate the earth going to Europe, Russia, Japan, S. Korea and then back to San Francisco on the same around the world trip. I didn't approve of this of course but she was mid 20s at this point and what was I going to do. She was a full adult. So, this must have been about 10 years ago now because she is mid 30s and married and living in Europe with her husband.
However, at 37 I went to India, Nepal, Thailand, Japan and could have gone to Hong Kong but I had giardia by then from India and Nepal and needed to get home because I was getting too skinny from giardia because I was starting to see spots before my eyes and looked like I had been a little in a concentration camp then because I got so thin. But, my family was with me my then wife and three oldest children ages 10 to 14.
Then in 1999 when I was 51 I took my mother who was then over 80 and my 10 year old daughter (the one that eventually went completely around the world to first Scotland, to Germany where we rented a 6 passenger diesel powered Fiat Motor home that we drove from Munich, Germany to Oberamagau and then to Austria, Switzerland, and as far as northern Italy, around Aosta, Italy. Then my son and his friend went south to the Amalfi Coast and we drove back to Munich to return the Motor home there and fly back to London where we rented a car and I visited Glastonbury, England where the Holy Grail was supposed to be buried by Joseph of Arimathea and Mary the mother of Jesus. Glastonbury is a very amazing holy place that young people go to now to have open air concerts likely in the fields filled with sheep surrounding this area. Glastonbury is actually the Isle of Avalon in the merlin legends and King Arthur and Guinnevere are buried there supposedly. However, the climate has changed since then and the lake that made Glastonbury (Avalon) the island has all dried up now. It seems there has always been climate changes going on even during the last 1500 years too. But, it's still green and beautiful there usually from all the rain.
Also, Glastonbury Abbey (the Catholic Ruins) are there in the middle of the town near a big parking lot if you are driving through there too. Also, there is Glastonbury Tor which you can climb up to the top on a trail as well which my then 10 year old daughter and I climbed up and looked at the sights of the area from there. It is quite picturesque by the way.
The point of this article is learning to live with what you can live with. I would never travel outside of the U.S. alone unless it was to go to Hawaii which is actually a part of the U.S. even though if you live there it feels more like a foreign country instead of the U.S. However, you might not notice this if you are only going to Hawaii for 2 weeks or less on a vacation or getting married there or something.
I also went there on my honeymoon after getting remarried in 1995.
By God's Grace
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